


The Apotheosis of All Monsters

by ChromeHoplite, Salems_luc



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Horror, M/M, SebaCiel - Freeform, Smut Eventually, Stephen King's IT au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-06-11 15:44:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15318786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromeHoplite/pseuds/ChromeHoplite, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salems_luc/pseuds/Salems_luc
Summary: Salem, Massachusetts is haunted. Not by the ghosts of witches murdered in the Salem Witch Trials, but by something more heinous, something without a name. It resides in the forest, creeps out every couple of years to feast on the souls and nightmares of children.When Ciel’s twin brother goes missing, he braves the forest of towering pines and endless shadows in search, accompanied by his friends. Ciel’s twin is no simple missing case, and the thing that took him is far more deadly than any of them ever imagined. It is the apotheosis of all monsters, a perfect accumulation of all their fears. And it has its many eyes on Ciel.





	1. The Skeleton Crew

They say the first forty-eight hours after a disappearance are the most crucial. Witnesses had better recollections and details were less likely to get jumbled by opinions and hyped news broadcasts. It was easier for police to track down leads and to chase possible suspects, barring them from leaving the vicinity or preventing them from establishing water-tight alibis. K9 units were more successful in picking up scents or in helping to find footprints and articles belonging to the missing victim. Longer than forty-eight hours, and the rescue mission became one of recovery. 

By Ciel’s best estimate, they were on the fifty-first hour, though he couldn’t be sure. His brother had disappeared in the midst of an intense three-hour game of Hide-And-Go-Seek with their friends in Salem Woods, as had been their habit since the age of six. Worse than the elapsed time was the deluge of rain that had occured not once, but twice since his twin’s disappearance. It hadn’t stopped the neighbourhood from looking for his brother -- they came out in droves with their galoshes, yellow raincoats and umbrellas; but the partial flooding of the creek by where they had played and the marshy banks giving way in a sort of mudslide, had caused a number of trees to topple and effectively wiped any evidence from the soil. 

Yet there he was, nearly midnight, two days after his brother’s disappearance, after having waited for his mother to drink herself to oblivion and for his father to head back to the office to make up for the work he’d neglected. He threw his bike against the fence where police had affixed the yellow caution tape and took off into the forest at a sprint, flashlight in one hand and leash in the other. Sebastian knew his brother better than any sniffer dog. He’d spent countless nights curled up at the end of his twin’s bed, often making his way under the blankets with him before sunrise to lick his feet and provide heat to cold toes. If someone could find him, it would be their large black Russian Wolfhound. 

“Okay, Shebashian,” Ciel garbled, small flashlight in his mouth as he dug into his back pocket to pull out one of his brother’s stinky socks that he’d retrieved from his sneakers, “Find ‘im. Where ish he?” He extended the sock towards the dog who took a sniff and dragged him towards the giant oak a mile into the pitch black forest, unilluminated by the moon or stars due to the thick canopy overhead. The light bobbed down towards the earth and up three feet ahead of him, occasionally pivoting from side to side through the damp, overgrown grass. 

He gave a startle now and again when a snake crossed his path or the scuttle of field mice at his side caused small, glowy-eyed predators to give chase, one of which tripped him up and brought about his current position on hands and knees, groping the sodden earth blindly in search of his blown out light. Once found, he fumbled with it, clicking it off and on repeatedly trying to bring it back to life with little success. “Fuck shit fuck,” he swore under his breath, and as he was rendered sightless in the menacing forest that had swallowed his brother up without a trace, he felt, rather than saw, Sebastian become rigid at his side. The dog snarled, and a possessive growl ripped from Sebastian’s throat as he stared pointedly at something behind Ciel, something the boy’s twelve-year old eyes could scarcely make out when his head whipped around. A trick of his tired, red-rimmed, swollen eyes? It had to be; there was no other explanation for the looming, wraithlike shadow more than twice his height, so dark that it blatantly stood out against the backdrop of the night. 

Rather than retreat from it, he stood, tumbling towards it as he reached into his hoodie, and withdrew his Swiss Army Knife. “Back off!” he threatened, his voice even, not giving away a modicum of anxiety he felt as he brandished his weapon,“Sebastian's a trained killer and I’m not afraid to set him on you!” 

The forest lit up with beads of light, eyes like miniscule suns hidden behind thick branches and the hot summer mist that came after rain. Ciel stood in the center of it all. Eyes that closed in on him from the dark and whispering forest, accompanied by the sound of something, perhaps several somethings, stepping on fallen branches and pushing away dense undergrowth. 

Sebastian’s bark gave their position away and the eyes descended on them all at once. There were four, to be exact, each a flashlight hovering in front of muddy galoshes and raincoats. Ciel stood under the spotlight his friends had created, fingers still tight on Sebastian’s leesh. The dog had calmed somewhat, now that he knew the intruders were his master’s friends. But there was still something out there, it lurked in the blackness where it couldn’t be seen. 

“There you are, Ciel.” Elizabeth was the one closest to him, her flashlight pointed at the footprints he’d made in the mud. “We’d agreed not to go search for him alone.” 

“How’d you find me?” he accused, shielding his eyes from the harsh light with the hand that held the knife as he tilted his chin down in an attempt to hide the heat flaring in his face at having been discovered. 

“I heard over the police scanner that your dad’s car had left your house. I assumed you’d be leaving soon after,” Soma explained, handing him a tiny LED keychain; it wasn’t much, but at least it would provide Ciel with some light should they get separated. 

It was no surprise that Vincent Phantomhive was under investigation; near everyone that was close to his brother was a suspect at this point -- their teachers, the baseball coach, his parents’ friends... And if they had bothered to keep surveillance on his father, he half expected to see someone come rushing through the forest to scold them for being out so late. “I couldn’t wait anymore. Mom didn’t let me go out this afternoon when it was raining. She said she’d lost one kid already, she wasn’t going to lose another.” 

“Well she has a point,” Lizzie said, panning her flashlight around the group. Wind was rustling the low hanging branches and rain-battered shrubs. Some of the trees beared jagged lines up their sides, as if they had been clawed at. Lizzie’s first thought was of the rainstorm, the harsh winds of the afternoon, but that was not enough to rip apart pine. 

Bard was crouched down, poking at something at the edge of the clearing with a long stick. He made a sound of disgust and stood, moving aside to show the group what he’d found. When Lizzie shined her flashlight on Bard’s discovery, bile started to make its way up her throat. 

It was hair, long and wavy and leading into pitch black forest. She could hear the questions the others were asking under hushed breathes. 

“A body?”

“Is it human?” 

There was no body, just the hair as far as Lizzie could see. It was coiled around the stick Bard had left in the ground, as black as the deep forest it was leading them to. “We should go,” Lizzie said, unable to take her eyes off the hair. Her flashlight caught movement, and she froze. But it was wind weaving through leaves. 

_“Fuck.”_ On a branch, about five feet above their heads, were more strands of hair. These _moved_ , twisting and curling in the air like hair would in water. The kids trailed their flashlights along the strands until one of them caught the edges of a gashing mouth, red like fresh blood with rows of teeth, all sharp and long. Demonic fangs in a mouth too wide to be human. 

They were frozen in place. None of them so much as blinking or breathing. It was Sieglinde who responded first, began shaking her head in denial, fists pressed firmly to the sides of her head. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real,” she repeated, more to herself than the others. Nothing she had ever read about in her scientific journals had prepared her for such a grotesque sight. 

Soma _knew_ the forest was haunted; that’s why his step-father had forbidden him from playing in it. _Too many angry spirits. Too many witches with lingering unrest, having died cursing the townsfolk, revenge sweet on their tongue._ “We… we need to leave…” he wheezed, clutching the talisman at his neck for protection. Whatever it was, witch, demon or shadow stalker, it did not seem to appreciate the gesture; black locks, slick with wet and strong as twine, coiled itself around the amber holding the scarab in place and snapped it. Soma gasped, feeling tiny shards of the fossilized resin pierce the soft flesh below his throat and fell to his knees, swatting his face as the beetle, he’d long-assumed was dead, crawled along his cheek, his forehead and made way for his scalp. 

Bard was the first one to run, though they were all thinking it. Whatever that thing was, with its tendril-like hair and gaping mouth, none of the children wanted anything to do with it. Bard thought of Ciel’s twin, lost somewhere in the forest with that _thing_. If they hadn’t played that game, if they hadn’t gone home without him, if they’d spent more time looking- 

His boots caught on roots unearthed by the rain and he fell, his hands shooting out to prevent his face from catching dirt. Bardroy rubbed at his knees and regretted his decision to wear shorts. Blood was starting to trickle down his leg as he looked around, realizing, for the first time since he’d taken off running, that he was alone. The others had scattered, presumably in different directions. He sat with his fingers in the soft earth, listening to the eerie quiet of the forest, and thought he saw one of those witches Soma was always talking about. The one back from the dead to get revenge on those who’d drowned her. 

But it wasn’t a witch. Its body was too long, limbs too spindly. It brushed against trees and bushes as it walked, as if not quite used to its elongated limbs. The creature was too tall for Bard to see its face from where he was sitting. He could not make out the creature’s hands and feet either, because they were pitch black, the color of spilled ink and… and the hair they’d all ran from. 

Bard scrambled to his feet, but the monster had yet to notice him. Or it didn’t care. It careened towards something else, hair a cloak around its pale body. 

To Ciel, the alarming sight of an emaciated, creeping shadow had been better than what he had hoped to find. An umbral vagueness he could forget -- could say it was all a nightmare, a figment of his imagination like the monster that had resided in his closet or under his bed when he was younger; but a lifeless corpse, a mirror image of his own face staring back at him, blue eyes bulging in horror, or worse still, cold and barren, would have been his undoing. His anguish for his twin’s fate ran too deep, his guilt too suffocating, his preemptive grief much too profound to find it in himself to be scared of something he wasn’t sure he was seeing. 

The others had clearly seen it though, so when Lizzie took off in the direction of the raveen, Ciel gave chase after her; the last thing he wanted was for her to go falling over the edge. “Lizzie!” He called out, having long lost her when Sebastian had tried to pull him in the opposite direction, towards his bike and hopefully safety. “Lizzie!” It echoed and re-echoed throughout the forest, somehow warping into a resonant, swelling growl that no longer sounded like his own voice. 

His thumb hurt with the effort of holding down the soft button of the keychain that illuminated the path ahead, his lungs burned from running, begging for his inhaler, legs leaden and aching from sore muscles. “God…” he panted, doubling over, hands patting himself down to find his medicine, “God… where is it?” he panicked, worried he’d dropped it along the way. 

The other children had been more fearful, had ran away without even checking if they were being chased. This boy, however, had paused to pat his wet clothes in search of something. 

The monster watched him, lurking behind a tree. Its claws tapped softly against the wet bark, hair suspended around its body and coiling around branches. The strands moved for the boy on their own, and the monster had to pull them back. Breathe bated. 

Not yet. 

It did not know why it waited. There was no one else around. There was the boy, there was a meal. 

It unfurled it’s claws and let the blue object it had stolen moments before tumble onto the dewy grass.

Ciel dropped to his knees, sitting upright on them, his small dirty hand massaging circles over his tight chest when the blood coursing just behind his ears became deafening. _Take long, deep breaths,_ he reminded himself internally, trying to halt his hyperventilation. Eyes squeezed shut, he dragged a lungful of air through his nose and released it via his mouth. In and out. In and out. In and out. Faster and faster until it felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. With a wrenching cry, he began coughing and sputtering, wheezing and gasping, trying to mouth the singular syllable of the word _help_.

He had not noticed the object the monster had flung in his direction. Fear rolled off the boy in waves, fear that tasted sweet on the monster’s tongue. It inched closer, saliva wetting its lips. Each human’s fear tasted different. The boy’s was candy, a lollipop melting in your mouth. Near drooling, the monster inched closer still. Until it stopped, a human’s arm length away from the boy’s back. 

Ciel conjured every calm image to his mind he could think of: eating mint chocolate chip ice cream with his brother at the lake last week, playing chess in their room two weeks ago when it had rained for days on end, staying up late to sneak down to the basement so they could watch an R-rated movie without their parents being any the wiser. None of it worked. Instead of soothing him, the recollections brought about a fit of sobs that turned his panic to sorrow and then into triumph as he realized that wherever his twin might be, he would soon be joining him. 

The fear the monster was feeding on soured from sugar-coated candy to sticky tar. The creature falted in its step, its hair stilled in the misty air. The taste of a human’s triumph was vile. The monster loomed closer, hoping to startle the boy out of whatever it was that replaced his fear. Usually, the monster would change forms, take on the victim’s most daunting nightmare. But this was enough. It had been enough for the other kids. 

The monster crouched, body arching over the boy’s small frame, claws digging into mud and grass and caging the tiny human in. Then it smiled, showed rows of teeth from one ear to the other, let its hair hang like tendrils around the both of them. 

It was full, but it would take this boy back to the nest, and store him with the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hope you've enjoyed the fic so far! Please remember to leave your comments and kudos, Chrome and I would greatly appreciate it! <3


	2. Full Dark, No Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments, kudos and asks you sent for chapter 1~ we really appreciated it! We hope you enjoy this second installment.

It wasn’t the hair or the teeth. It wasn’t even the putrid breath, hot and sickly sweet with death and decay, dampening the skin of his exposed neck, that alerted Ciel to his status as captured prey. Rather, it was the moment Sebastian’s angry growling and snarling turned to absolute silence.

“S-ss-sebastian…” he croaked breathlessly, his hand groping blindly beyond a veil of clumped, waxy fibers to comfort the quieted pet. Fangs sank into the flesh at the back of his hand and reflexively, he made a fist closing his fingers around the familiar plastic form of his inhaler. 

Before he could bring it to his mouth, before he could even wonder what it was that had dulled the sound and killed the breeze, Sebastian whined, locking his jaw anew around Ciel’s hand, dug his large hind claws into the moist soil, bent his back like a bow and pulled. The agonizing scream Ciel let out died in his throat as the Wolfhound tore through his skin to better the grip on his master; blood trickled over Ciel’s knuckles and tears streaked his dirtied face, both falling to the forest floor and christening the cursed ground beneath him. “S-Stop S-Sebastian! Ow!” 

He turned over, positioning himself to reach the aspirator from his grasp, hoping that once he could properly breathe, his voice would find the false authority he used with the giant dog. His fingers went slack, releasing the inhaler and with his other hand, he shoved it between his bluing lips and drew in a slow, deliberate breath, sucking in the medicine and filling his lungs. 

He opened his eyes as it spread, wide at first, in surprise, but narrowing into fierce slits once he made out the figure hovering over him. “You piece of shit!” he bellowed, spitting out his inhaler, kicking and thrashing at the figure above, “You! My brother! Where is he?!” 

The monster reeled back, had not expected such a reaction. It wavered, perpetually grinning mouth almost dipping into a frown. Humans were such fragile things. They looked at death and feared. Feared and ran and denied. But this boy…

It crouched even further down so that it could better look at the tiny human covered in mud. This was not an expression of fear. The child was angry, unbelievably so. His thrashing did no harm. The weak kicks of a twelve year old could never inflict much damage on a being such as the ancient creature. 

It raised a hand, long black claws that felt cold as bones and were as black as night. Each longer than the length of the boy’s chin to his top of his head. The creature lifted those claws, and nudged at the child staring up at it, like one would a worm one finds in the garden. 

Now on his knees, Ciel slapped the grotesque talon from his person, nose wrinkling in disgust. It sliced through the side of his hand like a hot knife through butter, spilling even more crimson onto the earth. “I asked you a question!” he demanded, his rage was such that he did not notice his new affliction. The pitch and tenor of his voice carried along the path of dead trees, disturbing nocturnal life and causing a nearby owl to hoot indignantly. With difficulty, the hand that had been previously injured by Sebastian painfully grasped the dog’s collar to prevent him from attacking; if anyone was going to hurt the monster for its part in his twin’s disappearance, it would be him. 

The creature, watching the entire scene with amusement, dragged an onyx claw along the grass, just centimeters away from the boy’s body. The talon cut a jagged line into the ground. It was a clear show of power, of effortless violence. 

“Your brother…” Its voice was the sound of crushing bones and smoked filled lungs. The sound of death and decay. Of something far older, perhaps as old as the universe itself. “He floats in my lair, but you shouldn’t worry. He’s being kept company by dozens of others.” The creature had no eyes, or too many eyes. They faded in and out of existence, but never on his face. Never where eyes were supposed to be. “Come join him.” Those eyes flared open now, all bright red, all with slitted pupils, like a snake’s. Black tendrils of hair descended on the tiny child, lifted him into the air as if he were a pebble. It dangled him there as the monster stood to its full height, head just barely sticking out above the forest of pine. The monster opened its bloody mouth, waiting for the boy’s fear to cover its tongue. 

As Ciel saw himself slipping away from solid ground, he released the leash and had wanted to tell Sebastian to run away, to get help, but he couldn’t trust that a blood-curdling scream wouldn’t be the result of him opening his mouth. So he pressed his lips together in defiance. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t cry. And though his brother was the stronger one, the braver one by far, Ciel was sure his twin had done enough screaming for both of them. 

“Give… him… back!” he commanded, as the monster let him freefall a story before he caught himself on the abundant stringy strands of hair and was dragged back up to his previous fifteen foot height. This was _good_. Nausea was better than fear. Nausea prevented panic. Allowed him to think. If he couldn’t get out of this… If he couldn’t make it home, what would his mother do? In the days since his brother’s disappearance, the cabinets had already been stocked with hard liquor and pills. His father had already sat inside his classic Mustang parked in the garage, engine running with the door shut tight. 

If his brother would not make it home, he had to. But he would come back; either to retrieve what was left of him or to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else. 

This time when the shadowy coils released his foot, he let himself fall. Down and down, eyes pinched shut, teeth gritted and body waiting for the impact that never came. 

There was a saying humans liked, “Don’t play with your food.” But the creature had so few other sources of entertainment. Its entire existence revolved around the concept of playing with its food. So when it’d dangled the boy in the air only to initiate a game of drop and catch, it’d been amusing itself. However, it was clear this boy was frustrating more than amusing. He did not scream, even as he fell. He did not cry for help when he’d been lifted into the air by a monster five stories tall. 

The creature was being robbed of the sweet fear it so desperately craved. None of the others in its nest tasted like this. They were bitter, or too sweet. They were fun. Edible, more importantly. This boy was a potential meal in the making, but he couldn’t be devoured at his current state. 

The monster started to shrink, legs and arms shifting to those befitting a human. Since it could no longer carry the boy with its claws, it let him fall onto the grass. Its too-wide mouth was gone, replaced by bruised lips that bled at the corner. Its was now a messier, muddier, and duller mirror of the boy standing across from it. 

“Why did you abandon me, Ciel?” It asked, moving closer on scratched up legs. It wore shorts stained with blood and a shirt brown from being dragged across the forest floor. Blood spilled from a gash in its abdomen, from the ragged fingertips on each hand. Hands that looked like they’d been clawing at the dirt. “Why did you leave me, little brother?” It limped forward, expression sorrowful, but slowly morphing into something twisted.

Upon seeing its rightful master, the dog ran headlong towards the shell of a boy, skittering to an awkward halt some inches from him. Sebastian whimpered, caught the scent of rotten meat and whined a distressed, high-pitched wail. 

“No Sebastian! Come here, boy!” Ciel called, hand extended towards the wolfhound to beckon him. The dog’s head swung from one twin to the other, but it was clear by the raised hackles of its shoulders that he favoured the injured counterpart, its instinct to protect, willingly ignoring the vine-like tendrils pouring out of the twin’s shorts and slithering their way to Sebastian. 

Ciel lurched forward, but too late, as a series of resourding snaps and a heartbreaking yelp filled the forest. The dog was forced onto its back, exposed belly in submission, hind legs collapsing limply at its sides. Despite the fact that the dog was in pain, and howling with it, what came from its mouth was a menacing, raucous laughter belonging to a twelve-year old boy.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Ciel implored, tugging the dog’s collar, grunting as he dragged its one hundred pound form through mud and forest debris, putting distance between he and the monster-turned-brother. 

“You were always so weak, little brother,” the creature croaked. Its voice was no longer so demonic, now a crackled echo of the twin’s. It paused, less than three feet away from Ciel and his dog. It smelled worse than it looked, like death. Like it had clawed itself out from a shallow grave. “I’m here now, Ciel. I won’t ever leave your side again.” It smiled, eyes those familiar blue, and held out a decaying hand to the boy. 

Grief overtook Ciel and he choked on a sob. He reached for his brother, a gesture borne of reflex and conditioning despite all his instincts telling him not to. Faster than what should have been human, the twin gasped his wrist in a strangling grip and yanked him forward. He stumbled over his injured dog, falling onto his knees before his brother’s blank-eyed replica like a sinner confessing his transgressions. His eyes fell on the necrotic, oozing gash in his twin’s abdomen, saw the maggots squirm and spill from the wound and inch themselves towards him. It made his stomach churn and his throat clamp down to suppress the gagging noisome whine as it ripped its way out of his mouth. His shock was so pronounced that he couldn’t stop his hand from being shoved deep inside, surrounded by a wet, semi-congealed substance that stuck to his flesh as it rolled around amidst the rubbery organ. “No. It’s not you. You can’t be alive! You wouldn't do this to me! You wouldn’t have done that to Sebastian! You’re dead! You’re dead!”

“I wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t left me to die!” Ciel’s twin, or the creature claiming to be him, unhinged its jaws and let rows of teeth fill its salivating mouth. It grasped at Ciel’s hands, rubbery skin and battered fingers like ice to the touch. “I’m like this because of you!” The tendrils descended on them, ends coiling around Ciel’s arms and legs, around his throat and mouth. Held him still as the gaping mouth hung over Ciel’s head. The creature was feasting on the child’s fear. Finally. Finally. 

A light broke through the black tent created by the tendrils, and they receded, shrinking away from the heat and dropping Ciel in the process. 

Bardroy stood like a boxer ready for a fight behind his friend, a lighter in hand. He had been using it as a flashlight since his fall down the ravine some minutes ago. Had nicked it from one of his uncles along with some cigs. Those had tumbled from his pocket when he’d tripped earlier. 

“What the fuck, man?” he asked, sneering with disgust at the sight of the creature in front of him. This wasn’t as worse as the spindly thing he’d seen stalking after his friend, but it was just as disgusting. He held a hand over his mouth, silently cursing himself for caring too much about Ciel to just leave him. Bard almost did, almost ran to where he’d parked his bike, but his conscience wouldn’t let him. He took Ciel’s hand, noticed it was wet with blood and bits of rotting meat. He almost threw up right there. 

The lighter went flying, his uncle would kill him for that later. It was such a pretty thing, too. Silver with a horned demon carved into the side. The monster jolted away from the flame, letting out a sound that made Bard’s vision blur. He tightened his grip on Ciel’s arm, and ran.

They’d taken maybe five steps in the opposite direction of the monster when they heard a whimpered whine. “Bard--” Ciel staggered, digging his feet into the soft soil and pulling his slick hand away from his friend, “Sebastian… we need to carry him back. I can’t just leave him there.” Against his better judgement, he ran back towards his dog, willing himself not to look up at the raw clumps of skin melting off the thing claiming to be his brother, to not listen to the sizzling and the screaming or to take in the scent of burning flesh like overcooked pork thrown into an oil-fired pan. 

He tugged Sebastian’s torso, trying to pick him up, but the dog weighed nearly as much as he did. “Fuck, help me!” he called over his shoulder to Bard who was just standing there; Ciel could tell he was considering running away. “I swear to God, if you don’t and I make it out of here alive, I’ll tell your grandma where you stash your gay porn.” 

“Geez, Ciel,” Bard said, running over. He eyed the monster, which was still dusting flames off its now tar-like body. “You don’t have to involve Gran in this.” 

Bard, used to carrying sacks of flour for his grandparents’ bakery, scooped up Sebastian into his arms. The dog was _heavy_ , and Bard grunted from the effort. “Can we get out of here now?” Preferably before the monster realized they didn’t have another lighter to throw, Bard thought. 

Ciel didn’t answer, instead he led the way, walking backwards to keep his sight set on the monster whose form was now indistinct, shadowy and blending in with the dark of night. The farther they got from where Bard had found him, the clammier Ciel’s ashen skin became, the more his pulse raced as he was assaulted by wave after wave of nausea. Twice, he stopped to vomit, telling Bard to keep going, that he’d catch up, and twice, he merely dry-heaved against a tree. 

It was definitely shock he was feeling and no matter how much he tried to drown the image from behind his eyes, it was still there poking at his brain with sharp, inhuman talons. “I wish I hadn’t seen any of that. What the hell was that thing?” 

“You tell me. It was some kind of naked, hairy monster, then it was your zombie twin. Shape-shifting demon?” Bard asked, picking his way through roots and and thorns. Sebastian whined in his arm, breathing hot-garbage breath over Bard’s face. “Man, what did your dog eat?” 

Sour from the unintentional dig at his twin, Ciel retorted petulantly with his own, “Your mom. Turn here, the creek where we saw Edward and Nina going at it is just up ahead.” It took the span of ten heartbeats before Ciel realized why an uncomfortable silence had fallen between them. “Sorry,” he muttered. 

Bard was staring at the ground, trying to keep himself from tripping over rocks as well as avoiding Ciel’s gaze. He shifted the dog to a more comfortable position. “It’s alright, dude.” Deep down, Bard knew Ciel didn’t mean any harm. Hadn’t meant to bring up his dead parents. The other boy had just suffered a loss, then saw his demon twin try to kill him. Bard was willing to cut him some slack. “You think Lizzie knows? About Ed and Nina?” 

“Are you kidding me? If she did, her brother would be black and blue and strung up in the hospital. You know she hates Nina after she showed up in the same Kill Bill Halloween costume at the party last year,” Ciel reminded Bard. It was a surprise he'd forgotten at all; it was the only thing Lizzie talked about for months. And while Lizzie’s costume was better and her kick-ass personality fit the character to a T, she was only twelve -- Nina on the other hand was a fifteen year old _woman_ and filled the yellow jumpsuit out accordingly.

“Do you think they're okay? The others, I mean…” Ciel asked, pushing aside low hanging branches and clearing the path for Bard now that they were out of the thick of the forest and the moon overhead somewhat illuminated their way. 

Bard wished they still had a flashlight, a lighter, something else beside the moonlight. The darkness behind him preyed on his nightmares, made him want to turn his head and scan it for monsters. One monster in particular. But he didn’t. He stared straight ahead. His parents fought and died in a war, damnit. He could handle some Samara wannabe. 

“They’re probably alright. Actually, I think I hear Soma’s bike. He’s gotta get that wheel fixed.” 

“Jesus Christ, could he be any louder?” Ciel huffed, trudging along a little quicker, eyes darting from side to side though he really couldn’t make anything out. Everytime the front tire of Soma’s bike made a full revolution, it squeaked, practically announcing their position to the whole forest. They finally broke through the thicket, emerging about half a mile from where Ciel had parked his bike and as they neared the empty clearing ahead, Soma’s racket was joined by Lizzie’s whispered hysterics and Sieglinde’s muttered self-talk. 

“Where’ve you been?” Soma demanded in the same tone Ciel’s mother used when she was torn between anger and worry. He ran up to Ciel and Bard, pushing his bike aside and it fell with a clatter; the group of them shared an exaggerated wince at the sound, but it hadn’t detracted the plum-haired boy from launching into a triad. Not one to mince words, he shrieked, “We thought you were dead! We’ve been walking the periphery looking for you, calling out for you for hours now!”

Bard interjected before Ciel could, placing Sebastian down on the wet grass and bending over with his hands on his knees. “There’s something in there,” he wheezed, nodding towards the tangled undergrowth and unnaturally quiet forest. 

“Yeah, that’s why we ran out! What were you two doing?” Lizzie was kneeling by the dog, already playing nurse. She smoothed back Sebastian’s fur from his eyes and cooed. “Poor thing. I have a wagon in my garage. You can use that to wheel him home.” The dog whined, tongue falling out its mouth as it heavily panted. 

“We were playing patty-cake with it. What the hell do you think we were doing, Lizzie? Look at us! Look at Sebastian!” Ciel snapped, dropping to his knees next to her to assess the dog’s damage. It was probably their first stroke of luck all evening that the snapping he’d heard earlier hadn't resulted in Sebastian’s bones piercing his canine flesh. 

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” Sieglinde suggested in a hushed tone barely anyone could make out, afraid they would be overheard, “Can we just get out of here? We can talk in Lizzie’s shed. Bard, are you still okay carrying Sebastian?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Nothing twelve hours of sleep can’t fix.” Bard grimaced, but shoveled Sebastian back into his arms nevertheless. He and Ciel lagged behind the rest of the group as they wheeled their bikes towards Lizzie’s house. The forest behind crept out of existence as they entered deeper into suburbia, which they were all pretty grateful for. The forest they’d always known since childhood was no longer safe, and none of them understood why. 

“Here,” Lizzie whispered, wheeling a wagon out to Ciel once they’d arrived at her house. “You know, you could stay over if you want. Any of you.” Her parents weren’t home. The house was dark and silent. The offer was more for her benefit than theirs. After the experience in the forest, she didn’t want to be alone. 

Sieglinde was squinting in the direction of Lizzie’s driveway, looking for her parents’ car; she weighed her options, listing them from least to most safe. Staying alone when there was a monster on the loose, was perhaps not so wise, but after what Lizzie had confided in her about what her father did to her when he got drunk, it was probably just as risky as staying _in_ the forest. “Why don’t you just stay at my house tonight,” she offered, “don’t worry about packing a bag, I’ll lend you some pyjamas.” 

They began talking over one another, Soma trying to make plans with all of them to meet once they were rested, so they could share their experience and try to make sense of what they’d seen. Ciel’s attention drifted from the conversation, mind hell-bent on making contingency plans, trying to figure out the next course of action in locating his brother. “I won’t be able to make it,” he finally piped up. “As soon as seven rolls around, I’m going back to the forest to look for my brother. You remember him, don’t you? He went missing a couple of days ago?”

Lizzie was the first one to speak. She put a hesitant hand on Ciel’s shoulder. He was nothing like his brother, who she was closer to, had a better connection with. “None of us forgot about him, Ciel. But there’s a monster out there. And there’s a chance…” She looked around, hoping one of the others might say it. When no one met her eyes, Lizzie sighed and said, “Seven AM. I’ll meet you at the usual spot. We’ll look for him together.” 

Bard stepped up, nudged Lizzie’s shoulder with his own. His arms felt like foam after carrying Sebastian; they’ll be sore tomorrow. “Same here. Now go get some rest. We’ll need it if we’re gonna fight Medusa tomorrow.” 

Ciel gave a curt nod and walked away with the little red wagon and his enormous dog barely fitting inside. He hadn’t said anything when Lizzie had brought up _the chance_ ; he understood what she was implying, and despite everyone else’s silence, he knew they agreed with her. It had taken all his restraint not to lash out. He’d bitten down on his tongue so hard that the taste of salty rust flowed over it and filled the indents where his teeth had pressed in. He didn’t want a pledge of solidarity, he wanted people who still believed his twin was alive and that he would be found if they just looked hard enough. 

When he put enough distance between them, he aired his grievances to Sebastian. “I _know_ you know that wasn’t him, right boy?” The dog’s head came up a few inches, was cocked to the side and he gave a whimper. Ciel took that to be an affirmative answer. “And you saw that thing tonight… Bard wants to fight it. How do you fight something like that?” A whine this time. His brother would know what to do. He was always more confident and self-assured. That’s how Ciel knew he was still alive. 

He thought back to all those Stephen King movies he and his twin snuck downstairs for; what had they learned from the master of horror himself as it pertained to killing monsters? Silver bullets? No, those were for werewolves and besides, he didn’t have a gun. An injection of a lethal substance? Those were for kids who’d been buried in desecrated indian burial grounds. Objects of faith and sufficient _belief_ were also out of the questions, seeing as he lacked both. It was useless to speculate when he didn’t even know what _it_ was. 

He rounded the last block and turned onto Derry road. As he discerned the outline of his lush two-story home, thick clouds settled before the moon and the lampposts flickered and burned out one by one as he passed them, succumbing to their shadowless fate. The slight breeze that had been there all night abruptly tapered off and for once in his twelve years living at this address, the neighbourhood was _dead_. Gone were the middle-of-the night insomniacs out for walks; even the stray cats, raccoons and owls had stayed away from the oppressive dark. 

That was until he saw her in her nighty at the end of the driveway, whiskey bottle in hand, hair out of place and eye makeup smeared like that of a sad clown. 

She’d been drinking again, hand wrapped around the bottle’s neck. The third bottle tonight. She swayed as she made her way back to the porch, knowing he would follow. The thing was, without the glass bottle in her palm, that empty feeling came back again. The kind that twisted her at her core and made it hard for her to breathe. So she was an alcoholic. That was better than a grieving mother, and when she drank, the grieving mother part went away for a while. 

“Where have you been, Ciel?” Her words slurred, didn’t come out as angry as she’d intended. “Do you know what time it is?” She used her free hand to tap at her naked wrist. The watch. Where was the watch? She swiveled around to scan the ground for it, only making herself dizzier in the process. “And why are you wheeling Sebby around?” 

Though there was no wind, the porch chimes rang an eerie melody on their own, something he’d heard in church when he’d gone with his grandparents. The sound had sufficiently distracted Rachel, who stared through the assortment of seashells he and his brother had strung up in a hot mess a few Mother’s Days ago. 

While she was mesmerized by the clinking and tinkling sound, Ciel took the opportunity to wheel Sebastian to the side of the house where his doghouse was located. He settled him in, kissing him on his damp nose and locking the gate behind him, promising he would come back to sleep with him as soon as his mother was back in bed. By the time he returned, his mother was sprawled out on the veranda swing, crying to herself about having lost both her babies. 

“I’m here, Mom. Let’s get you back inside.” He helped her up on her feet and she leaned heavily against him, breathing a sweet, woodsy scent onto his face as she praised him for not leaving her. 

Neither of them, both wrapped up in their own exigency, noticed the void of light that had imposed itself on the Phantomhive roof. The night sky was dark enough for the creature to blend into, but not enough that one would not see it if one looked hard. The creature was a smear of tar-like limbs and inky hair as it crawled along the tiles, watching Ciel help Rachel into the house one porch step at a time. The light turned off, drenching the house in darkness, and as long as there was darkness, the monster stayed and watched.


	3. Suffer the Little Children

Lizzie leaned her bike against a tree trunk and fiddled with the bow in her hair until it sat upright and dainty. Her shoes, which had been white when she’d left the house earlier, were now stained brown from the still damp ground. 

Their usual spot was a small clearing just at the edge of the forest, a few feet away from the hiking trail. They’d found it by accident after wandering off the path and chasing Sebastian through the pine needles. It had been littered with trash back then. The kids never wondered much about who had occupied the space before them, or why they never came back. The clearing now had a little tent, barely big enough to fit two people. They’d rolled rocks over for chairs. Inside the tent were extra batteries for the flashlights, some water bottles, and one of Sieglinde’s astronomy books. 

Lizzie stashed more water bottles inside the tent, they were running low, and ducked back out to find Ciel staring at her, his bike at his side. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept all night. All week. His hair was getting dirty, looked like it needed a wash. She tossed a granola bar at him, smiling with her signature sunny disposition. “Grabbed you some breakfast, Ciel.” 

“M’not hungry,” he muttered, tossing it back, but coming short of the distance that separated them. It was a lie. Of course he was starved, but he couldn’t seem to hold anything down. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or his nerves being near-frayed. Maybe it was his too-vivid imagination that kept envisioning his twin hurt, maimed or worse, as a banquet feast for maggots and other scavengers. 

“Where’s everyone else?” he yawned, “I thought for sure I’d be late.” It was only his father returning from god-knows-where when the sun came up that tore him away from Sebastian’s side. He’d lied to Vincent, telling him lamely that the dog had been struck by an errant bike, ridden by someone he couldn’t identify. The man was himself bewildered by his grief and anxiety and didn’t think much of it, buying his son’s cock and bull story and letting him know that he’d call the vet this afternoon to make an appointment. 

Lizzie picked up the unwanted granola and stuffed it back in her bag. There were a million things she wanted to talk to him about, but knowing there was only one topic in particular Ciel cared about, she didn’t bother. 

“I don’t know.” Around them, the forest chirped as if it hadn’t housed a monster the night before. Lizzie did not know if this monster slept, if it was active only at night like vampires. She’d barely caught much of what it looked like. Only the tangled hair and long limbs. 

Last night, she’d stepped out of the shower and went about cleaning the drain of her hair as she usually did. But even though her strands were blonde and nothing like the wet tendrils she’d seen in the forest, she had almost thrown up. 

“What do we do?” she asked, sitting down on one of the rock chairs. “About the monster? If we see him… Well, Bard wants to fight it. But we don’t know anything about it!” She wished there was a book, something on the occult maybe. It could tell what to do, the creature’s weaknesses… When she voiced this to Ciel, the trees around them rustled as if laughing at the idea.

***

Sieglinde ran out the house, book bag slung over her shoulder before Lizzie woke up and had left her a note on the mattress saying she had something to take care of. That _something_ consisted of marching her ass to the college library, open early due to the fact that it housed at least six summer school classes for the local secondary school.

She knew this building like the back of her hand, could probably find whatever book she was looking for, blindfolded, but this time, it wasn’t a book she was looking for, it was the news archive. Whenever someone spoke of Salem, the first thing they thought about was the Witch Trials of 1692. Her hometown was more than just “Witch City” though; it had played a part in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and had even been herald as being the birthplace of the U.S National Guard -- so it wasn’t all that terrible! 

And yet, it still had a pretty bad rap, so it wouldn’t be so far fetched if those who had murderous tendencies made their way over to simply add a certain amount of mystique to their deviancy. This was what Sieglinde focused her research on as she scanned the newspapers going back ten, twenty, forty, fifty, sixty years. And a pattern emerged. 

A pattern she had to share with Lizzie, Ciel, Bard and Soma. 

She ran into the woods so excited about her findings that it took a solid fives minutes for her brain to catch up to her adrenaline. She checked her watch and felt the bottom drop out of her stomach; there was no way it should have been this dark at seven forty-five a.m., even under the thick canopy of leaves overhead. She shouldn’t have taken the shortcut that lead to their clearing. She was already late, what would another ten minutes have mattered in the grand scheme of things? She clutched the massive tome of clippings to her chest as if it were a shield, as if knowledge would be enough to keep her safe. 

Seven a.m. was supposed to be blue skies and birdsongs, but Sieglinde was standing among shadows that move slow and languid, shadows that didn’t belong to any particular thing. The branches around her seemed to droop and it became clear they were not tree branches at all. They looked like hair, black and stringy and curling into fingers. 

There was a growl. It rustled the bushes and exiled the birds from their perches. Then it sprang out, paws scratching at the dirt and grass. At first glance, the creature was a dog, dirty with matted fur and too many eyes. But at a closer look, it was clear the thing was some sort of werewolf. Too big to be a dog, and not at all adorable. It advanced until it had Sieglinde back against a tree. Drool dripped from its snarling mouth, teeth unnaturally red like they were covered in blood. 

The forest was no longer a forest at seven in the morning. It had reverted to the forest of last night, a haunted and eerie place where horror dwelled. And it crowded around Sieglinde as it tried to suffocate her. 

Sieglinde felt the fingers of her left hand pried from the large book one at a time, from pinky to thumb, and when her right dominant hand wouldn't give, held fast to the hardcover, her middle and index fingers fractured under a spectral weight. She cried out, dropping to her knees. It was clear now that whatever was attacking her did not want her being in possession of the book. 

That fact alone was enough to strengthen her resolve; she bowed over the book, trying her best to conceal it, as her good hand swat away the midnight coils that jabbed her sides and slashed against the thin fabric of her emerald tank top. 

She pushed the pain and fear from her mind, like she did in the schoolyard when the bullies came to pick on her for being such a nerd. And just like those incidents, she recited all the stars she knew, in order of relative distance from the Earth. 

“Solaris… Proxima Centuri… Alpha Centuri… Barnard’s Star… Wolf 359… Lalande 21185… Siri-- ahhhh!” Her head was flung back, gripped hard by the roots of her raven hair, exposing her throat to the monstrosity before her. 

The creature licked at its lips with a long and spike-covered tongue. The sound that came out from its mouth was horrid, deafening. Then it was gone. 

Lizzie stood in front of Sieglinde, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. She held out a hand, asked Sieglinde if she was alright. Before the other girl could answer, Lizzie’s body started to convulse. The blonde fell to her knees, vomit spewing from her mouth and nose. Her head tilted backwards in a way that made it seemed like her neck was broken. 

Then, unnaturally fast and horrifyingly monstrous, Lizzie ran towards Sieglinde, vomit covered mouth in a grin that stretched from one ear to the other. 

There was a time for stoicism and principle and a time for instinct and survival; and being only ten, Sieglinde sided with the latter. She dropped the heavy book for the thing, much like she would have dropped a steak as a distraction for a ravenous bear that was bound and determined to swallow her whole. 

Without so much as looking behind her, she fled towards her destination, shirt drenched in bile and vomit, feet kicking up pine needles, onyx hair whipping in her face -- her own indistinguishable from the monster and lungs burning as they pushed the air out. The darkness receded the farther she got from it, but it still felt like she was running against a current, like her feet were lead. She heard the echo of Lizzie’s gut-wrenching scream and a raucous, laughing plea of _Help! Help! Save me! Save me!_ and it was enough to turn her head away from her course and to stumble headlong into a solid figure. 

Bard grabbed Sieglinde’s arms, held her steady even though she was struggling against his strength. He’d came from his grandparents’ house, later than he’d meant to and without his bike. On his walk to their meeting place, Bard passed a fountain in the middle of town, a fountain he’d passed thousands of times before. 

There was a statue there of the founder, a burly man with a serious look on his face. It stood facing north, feet together and right arm pointing into the distance. When Bard had passed by, he swore the stone man moved, stepped off its perch and dashed behind Bard with the sword it was holding in its left hand. Bard had heard it chant, although he couldn’t make out the words. 

It had been too early in the day, and the streets were nearly empty then. There had been no one around to witness the stone. The statue had tailed Bard until he got to a busy street, then vanished altogether. Bard still didn’t know if maybe he hallucinated the entire thing due to his lack of sleep. This town had always been strange, but this had been something else completely. 

But his experience made it easier for him to believe Sieglinde when she rambled about something attacking her just a minute ago. He took her hand, and went back the way she’d came. If it was the same monster from last night, and he hoped it was (one shape-shifting monster was enough for him, thank you very much), he was ready to confront it. 

But the spot was empty. The book Sieglinde said she dropped was nowhere to be seen and there were no other footprints in the dirt beside Sieglinde’s and Bard’s. He grimaced, mentally counted all the lighters and matches he had in his backpack, and told Sieglinde they needed to talk to the others. 

They got to the clearing without incident this time, but that fact hardly reassured Sieglinde and by the hard expression carved into Bard’s face, she knew he felt the same. Neither had spoken, but they were both hyper alert, heads whipping from one side to another whenever they heard the slightest sound, or breaking into a jog whenever the sun was momentarily eclipsed by the clouds. 

“It’s about fucking time,” Ciel spat at his friends when they’d emerged from a pathless direction in the woods, just as he came out of the small tent. Lizzie had sent them in there to try to calm down after he’d dug a well-worn groove into the earth with his pacing. 

“Eight-thirty!” he roared, pointing to his watch, not unlike his mother the previous night; the only difference was that he wasn’t drunk and there actually was a watch (belonging to his brother) around his wrist. “Every minute counts! If you didn't want to be here, you should have said so. I'd have gone by myself.” 

Sieglinde gripped Bard’s bicep when she saw him jerk away from her. They were all tired, scared, confused and worried; nothing good would come from a confrontation.“Shhh… he’s grieving,” she whispered to the big blond boy, hoping it was enough to ease his flaring temper. And it might have been, had Ciel not provoked him farther. 

Ciel’s reaction was childish at best. His fists curled at his sides and he stomped his foot once in frustration. “Stop whispering, I’m not dumb, I can read lips. I’m not grieving. You only grieve after people are dead and _he_ isn't dead, he’s _lost_.” And because he couldn’t stop himself, proving the exact opposite of what he’d just said about his intelligence, he plowed on, “Just because your family didn't come back, doesn't mean mine won't as well.”

This time, Sieglinde wasn’t able to hold Bard back. He fisted Ciel’s shirt, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. Ciel was his friend, sure, but he’d cross a clearly defined line. Bard was going to give him a black eye for it. 

“Bardroy!” Lizzie shouted, running up to them. She had a stick in her hand that she poked at Bard with. “Let him go!” Bard flinched when the sharp point of the stick dug into his ribs. He was taller and bigger and stronger than the little blonde, but Lizzie hadn’t gotten a national championship trophy in fencing for no reason. She whirled on Ciel once Bard backed up, demanding that the other boy apologize. Sometimes it was hard to forget that Lizzie was the group mom. 

Ciel sized up the burly boy sneering at him, taking him in from head to toe. For a seventh grader, Bard looked every inch a tenth grader with a solid thirty pounds on Ciel, and at least an extra foot and a half. He was athletic and it showed in his build, but his scrapper side showed in his stance, and the way he was flexing his fists. 

It would hurt; he was counting on it. The anguish of his brother’s disappearance had left a void and it was so intense that it had turned visceral. It twisted in his guts, made it hard to breathe. A good left hook would be a temporary remedy, would distract from the ache a little bit. He looked around Lizzie who stood in front of him, separating them and slapped his left cheek, “Come on, Bard… right here. It’ll feel better won’t it?” 

It was Lizzie who smacked him, lightly, on the head with her stick. “You wanna go look for your twin, right? Then stop trying to pick a fight so we can go.” She shoved him back, giving both boys a hard look. After dropping the stick for her backpack, Lizzie linked her arm around Sieglinde’s. Papers were spilling out of the other girl’s pockets. Each contained a page of words, some with hazy and muddled pictures. Lizzie picked one up, saw that it was the third page of a news article from around fifteen years ago. 

“Woah, Sieglinde. Someone’s been doing her research,” Bard said, leaning over Lizzie’s shoulder. He gathered up the other papers, handed some over to Ciel and flipped through the rest. When he noticed the look on Ciel’s face, Bard stacked his pile of papers together neatly and stored them in Lizzie’s backpack for safe keeping. “We can look through those later, with Soma.” None of them knew where the other member of their little group was. It was almost two hours after their agreed meeting time. “It’s bright and early. The monster’s probably sleeping,” he eyed Sieglinde as he said this, thinking of what she’d described happening to her earlier. It was better to leave that out for now. Tensions were already running high among certain people. 

Lizzie led the way, having picked up a longer stick to help her navigate through the unearthed roots and overgrown bushes. She talked to keep the silence away as they traced their steps back to where Ciel had encountered the monster last night. “I was just telling Ciel, there’s probably a book or something on the occult that’ll have information we can use on this thing,” she said, referring to the monster. 

Bard, who walking silently next to Sieglinde, gave her a little nudge and said “didn’t you find a book like that?” 

Sieglinde pressed her lips tight and shook her head so that the gesture was barely noticeable; the altercation with the monster had left her deflated, confidence shook and maybe a little paranoid. She didn’t want to be overheard and couldn’t help but feel like the forest had eyes -- and ears. Yet, the more she thought about it, the less likely it was that anything unnatural had occured. For one, where was the vomit the Lizzie-monster had spewed all over the front of her shirt? And she was pretty sure she’d felt the burn as something claw-like cut into her back and soaked her tank top with blood, drool or both. 

“Bard, look down my shirt, won’t you?” she whispered, halting mid-step and letting Lizzie and Ciel make their way around the bend. 

Bard’s eyes went wide and his face turned a tomato red. He stuttered as he asked Sieglinde to repeat herself, and when she did, he nodded his head and shoved a shaky hand through his short blond hair. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you said.” He pulled up the back of her shirt, blushed even harder at her bare skin, then jumped ten feet away. “It’s fine- ah, you’re fine. Perfect. Like, there aren’t any marks or anything. Not perfect as in you’re perfect. Not that- fuck.” He pressed his lips into a thin line and banged his head on a nearby tree when Sieglinde was no longer looking. 

There was a sound like nails raking on a chalkboard coming from somewhere left of where he was standing. Bard frowned, realizing that his friends had gone on ahead. When he searched the shadowy undergrowth, he saw a pair of red eyes looking back. They blinked at him, slow and taunting. The bushes rustled, then the overhanging branches. The eyes moved upwards, now well over Bard’s head. 

“You okay there, Bard?” Lizzie shouted at him. Her head was poking out from behind a tree trunk. He stared at her, waited for something horrible to happen, but the girl merely frowned and came over. The only thing off about her was her pine needle covered hair. He followed her to where Ciel and Sieglinde were waiting, occasionally stopping to look behind him. “Sieglinde was telling us about a book she’d found,” Lizzie explained. 

“The book she _lost_ ,” Ciel griped on hands and knees some feet away from his friends, hands sweeping under a plentiful, thorny thicket of raspberries. He’d tried to wade through them, determined not to leave one unchecked in his search, but the dense barb had cut into the soft flesh of his legs. He twisted his head to the side to get away from the unnatural sickly sweet scent that wafted from the juicy low-hanging fruit and listened to Sieglinde re-describe the book in question. 

“You know how my dad teaches history at Endicott right? Well, when he finally became tenured, the department gifted him this scrapbook, except it doesn’t look like one; it’s bound in red leather, cracked on the sides and it smells like tobacco and dust, because it’s, you know, really old. Each professor added to it any interesting or newsworthy events going on in Salem while it was in their possession. But like, it’s not in good shape, the book’s original stitching was barely holding it together, so when I left with it, I had to-”

“Tie a big rubber band around it?” Ciel asked, interrupting her. He was reaching far under the bush, wincing painfully as the thorns brushed the side of his face. His fingers closed around the elastic and pulled it towards him, snagging the papers on a stubborn root. It was stuck. He didn’t yank on it anymore, afraid it would snap if he applied too much force, so he turned onto his belly, used his other hand, dipped his chin towards the soil and squinted to try to get a better look. 

What he thought had been a root, was actually five small ones, each jutting from the earth in proximity to one another. But they weren’t gnarled enough, or weathered enough. They were pinkish under the caked on dirt, looking more like a child’s bony fingers that had dug into earth. Ciel shook his head, a repeated _no, no, no, no, no_ tumbling from his barely moving lips as he let go of the book in favour of the roots. 

“You guys! Help! I found him!” Ciel cried out to the others, and as he did, the roots wrapped around his hand and dragged him farther into the bush, scraping his face, his forearms and elbows. He kicked about wildly, instinctively, but refused to let go. He held fast to both the hooked digits and hope, shouting and pleading, not at all caring that what he was saying wasn’t making sense, “He’s still alive! Hurry, he’s buried under the bush!” 

Bard took hold of Ciel’s legs, despite the smaller boy’s incessant kicking, and nearly got clipped on the mouth by the toe of Ciel’s sneakers. From where he was standing, Bard made out matted hair and a bloody hand gripping Ciel’s. The girls gathered around the bush, each shoving aside thorny branches and bruised raspberries. 

There wasn’t a body. The ground was clear, save for the roots and the book falling apart on the dirt. Ciel’s fingers were grasping roots. Pinkish and finger-shaped, but roots. Lizzie bent down and brushed them from Ciel’s skin. They’d left ugly red marks coiled around his palms and knuckles. 

“There’s no one here,” Lizzie lamented. The roots she was holding reminded her of stringy black hair. She dropped it and wiped her hands on her shorts. Bard let go of Ciel’s legs after having successfully kept him from being dragged into the thorns, and trampled over to look for himself. He’d seen a body, just as Ciel had, and he expressed this loudly to the rest of the group. 

There was not much any of them could do, though. Bodies simply do not move on their own. None of them wanted to admit the possibility of the monster trailing them, tricking them. Monsters did not come out during the daytime. This was supposed to be when they were safest, when the forest was safest. Bard pulled out his lighter, clicked it open and close until the sound drove Lizzie crazy enough that she yanked it out of his hand. 

The sun was well past overhead by now. The early morning sky had turned a tulip orange with splashes of pink thrown in. Clouds were rolling by, nearly scraped by the tips of towering pine trees. When she was little, Lizzie used to lie on the grass with the twins and point out shapes formed by the clouds. Now, seeing the sky so orange horrified her. 

They hadn’t been here that long. A few hours at most, but not enough for the day to drift to a close. She grabbed Ciel’s wrist and turned it over to read his watch. Seven pm. She did the math in her head, counted the amount of steps it took from where they’d met up to where they were now. There were hours unaccounted for. She did the math again. And again. None of it made any sense. 

The last remaining rays of sunlight peeked through tree trunks, casting long and obscure shadows on the ground. The trees came to life. They bent and twisted and hunched over. The cicadas screamed their unholy song, and Lizzie threw up her hands to cover her ears. The bushes rustled, seized with movement, as squirrels and rabbits with too-red eyes scurried over the kids’ feet. 

There was a body, hanging from a branch far above their heads. A rope had been tied around its ankle and it swung upside down, headless and decaying and a nest for maggots. Lizzie stared at it until it started to move, raising one bitten and bloody arm to wave at her. 

She dug her nails into Ciel’s wrist, and shoved Bard and Sieglinde forward. “We have to go. Now!” 

Sieglinde didn't have a chance to follow Lizzie’s skyward gaze, before innards spilled from above, settling around their feet, writhing and twitching on the ground as if they were alive. Her hands found Ciel’s eyes as he tilted his chin up and she began to drag him back and away from the scene. 

“Don’t look,” she warned him urgently. The corpse overhead groaned, though it had no head, and the sound coming from it was as unmistakable as the familiar, faded green pullover it wore. “It’s not really him. Don’t look Ciel.”

“Cieeeeeeel…” it bellowed from the jagged opening at its sawed off neck, dripping long, sticky, black strands that undulated in the early evening breeze. “Help me, brother.”

Ciel’s head thrashed from side to side, trying to free itself from Sieglinde. He heard her call for Bard’s help and was abruptly lifted and thrown over the bigger boy’s shoulder. “Come and face me like a man, you dumb fuck!” he called out to the darkness. As they put distance between them, the carcass fell thirty feet to the pine needle littered soil and upon impact made a clear bone-shattering sound, then erupted into a cloud of black ash. “Did you hear me? 1-8-6-7 Forrester Street, you bitch! I'm waiting for you!”

“Are you insane?!” Lizzie asked, stopping mid run to glare at Ciel. He looked so little draped over Bard’s shoulder that her heart stung at the sight. 

Bard used his free hand to urge her along. “You think monsters can read street signs?” he asked, chuckling as if they weren’t all running for their lives. “Can you imagine zombie Rapunzel asking people for directions to his house?” 

They cleared out of the forest, stumbling onto the road with hands over their knees and heavy breaths. Bard gently put Ciel down, then patted his head as an apology for picking him up in the first place. 

Ciel shook Bard’s hand from his head and stood a little taller, trying to recover some of the dignity he’d been stripped of when he was denied his fight. He untucked his shirt and let the scrapbook fall to the street and it echoed more loudly than it should have in the deserted space. The band holding the relic had somehow snapped and with its flimsy spine broken, the pages were splayed like limbs being drawn and quartered. 

Sieglinde crouched the same time he did to gather the musty news clippings and sepia photos that had spilled from the safety of their confines. “I can’t go home yet,” he told them, keeping his eyes lowered, afraid he’d see pity in theirs. “I n-need… I need…” He couldn’t think straight and this alone would prevent him from being able to adequately lie to his parents about his whereabouts. 

“You need to go find Soma first,” Sieglinde offered, when she noticed the boy struggling with his words. She gave Ciel the compiled remnants of the book; he’d managed to keep it safe somehow and was the only one who’d remembered to grab it from the bush. 

“He’s probably at home jacking off,” Bard said, wiping sweat off his face with his shirt. Lizzie threw him one of her world famous looks. “Or he’s sleeping?” 

The placement of the moon in the sky made them all a bit tense. When they’d left the house earlier, the moon was dipping away to make room for the sun. Now it was back, bright and nearly full and imposing. Lizzie kept an eye on it as they trudged down the street in the direction of Soma’s. 

They got to Soma’s house in record time, having sprinted most of the way, only to find themselves standing in front of the house under a feebly lit up light post. Normally, the semi-detached bay-and-gable was illuminated by a myriad of multi-coloured votive candles, dim solar absorbing lights and flood lamps set about the perimeter of the property; except that now the house seemed empty and abandoned without them. It was childish, but they had hesitated to leave the weak blob of luminosity that had been cast upon the pavement. None of them wanted to be stained by the darkness that enshrouded the home, feeling safer from the monster (despite experience having proven the contrary) when they were doused in the illusion of day. 

They stood in a circle, their backs to one another to keep watch for anything _unnatural_ and when a whole five minutes had gone by in absolute silence, Ciel shoved Bard from the cover of light. “See, you’re fine. Go knock on Soma’s door, then bring him here. I need to have words with him.” 

Bard, grumbling, stepped up to the front door with his fist raised and his eyes on every shadow within five feet of him. He rapped his knuckles against the door twice, then stepped back with his fists still raised, just in case something other than human opened the door. 

The door only opened a sliver, but it was enough for the house’s occupant to see who had decided to call on he and his ward. With the chain set firmly in place, and both his holy water and crucifix in his hands, he spoke softly to the blond boy. “Soma’s sleeping Bard. He can't come out to play. Run along home now, there’s a good lad. It’s not safe to be out anymore. Best if you lock yourself up until this blows over.” 

Bard made a face at his friends, who were all still standing huddled under the light. “Until what blows over?” he asked, turning back around to face Agni. The man looked like a normal guy, save for his mop of white hair, but he was adamant about there being some sort of witchy activity happening in the alleyways of the town. Bard wished his friends would come back him up. “He was supposed to meet us earlier. It’s only seven.” Bard tried to push the door open gently, but found even with all his applied force, the door wouldn’t budge. “Mr. Agni?” 

Agni’s face changed from polite disinterest to stern and condemning as he eyed the boy’s hand inserting itself into the thin opening. “It’s too evil to be out there,” he whispered, “and if your grandparents were good, God-fearin’ folk they’d keep you in as well, Baldroy. Now if you wouldn’t mind…” 

“Mr. Agni,” Sieglinde called out, running up to Bard’s side. She’d known Soma’s guardian for as long as the two of them had moved to Salem two years ago and if there was any way they were going to see their friend, she would have to be the one to distract him. “Please, sir, ever since Ciel’s twin went missing, my thoughts have become impure. Whatever’s going on,” she told him, lip caught between her petal-pink lips, fingers dancing along her exposed collarbone and moving downwards, “it feels like it’s spreading.” 

The more the girl talked, the less attention the older gentleman paid to the boy. His eyes widened in revulsion and he unhooked the chain from its latch and pushed the door back to admit her into his home. Without any more prompting, he doused her in holy water, then took her by the arm to lead the black-haired girl into his parlour. “If we don’t dawdle, we can protect you from the evil with the help of a few deities.” 

Sieglinde turned her head towards Bard and mouthed _“go”_ to him before she disappeared behind heavy oak double doors. 

Bard waved to the others, and together the three of them slipped into the still slightly ajar door and down a long hallway. Soma’s room was upstairs, but the stairs creaked and bellowed, and sound was the last thing they needed right now. Bard stayed at the bottom of the steps to keep a lookout while Ciel and Lizzie went on ahead. 

They’d been at Soma’s dozens of times before, not all with Agni’s knowledge, but tonight the hallways seem almost sinister. Agni hung talismans and charms on doorways, and kept sage on the windowsills. Symbols were scratched into the floor, peaking out under the Persian rug.

Lizzie kept her eyes down, away from the paintings and photographs hanging around her and Ciel. They were staring at her. She could feel their eyes digging into her back as she and Ciel ran as quietly as they could towards Soma’s door. 

As they neared Soma’s room, Ciel was sure he heard the distinct sound of scuttling; the staccato rhythm of their tapping claws and pincers against the original stripwood flooring, wall and ceiling varied in intensity, and pressure, leading him to believe they belonged to an array of creepy-crawlies. The conjured image rocked his small frame and he hoped that this was merely an auditory hallucination, if not for him, then at least for Soma who was terrified of anything remotely insect-like. Even the scarab he wore around his neck was a constant source of anxiety for him, but something he’d forced himself to don to work through his fear. 

“Do you hear that?” He hushed to Lizzie as he put his ear on Soma’s bedroom door. His hand closed around the cold brass knob and he twisted it to the right. Nothing. To the left. Nothing still. “It’s locked.”

Lizzie bent down and peeked into the small crack under the door. “I can’t see anything,” she said, frowning. She stood up and knocked on the door, then pressed her ear against the wood. There was definitely some kind of scuttling sound on the other side. “Soma? You okay?” Lizzie thought of the headless body, the giant wraith, and forest that stole hours from them. She pushed on the door. “Soma?” 

A hymn from the room below came up through the floorboards, and Ciel swore, “Fuck it,” thrusting the scrapbook onto Lizzie and barged into the door, using his left side. He groaned as his shoulder made contact with it again and again, and on the third attempt, the door swung open of its own accord and he fell onto the floor in a crumpled heap. 

He scanned the room, eyes roaming from untouched bed to messy desk to bare bookshelf and finally landed on the closet. He was about to tell Lizzie that he didn’t see Soma anywhere, when he took notice of a parade of millipedes inching towards and scurrying under the closet door. “Why do I feel like Ron Weasley in Chamber of Secrets following a shit ton of spiders into the forest right now?” He asked out loud. It was a rhetorical question of course, but just voicing his concern helped ease his nerves as he pulled open the door. There, hanging from the broken light fixture was a cocoon, significant in its size, meshlike and grey like it’d been there for years. 

Lizzie threw her hands over her mouth. This was worse than the hair. She knew this was the monster’s doing, couldn’t explain how she came to that conclusion but she was absolutely sure of it. 

Bard bursted into the room, whispering harshly about how they had no time left. His words froze in his mouth when he saw the cocoon. “Is that Soma?” 

“God, I hope not,” Lizzie said as the giant grey mass started to move. She handed Bard a pair of scissors she’d found in Soma’s drawers and shoved him forward. 

Thrown to the wolves by his friends once again, Bard began poking at the cocoon with the scissors. Lizzie and Ciel watched behind him, dodging beetles and spiders that scurried over their feet. “This is fucking gross,” Bard complained. He could see Soma’s hand. “He better have some kickass wings after this or I swear to god…” 

A heavy thump from downstairs made them all jump, startled. Lizzie closed the bedroom door and pressed her back against it. “Cut faster.” 

Soma’s hand pushed through the small opening his friend had made and with it, some few hundred cockroaches, spiders and arachnid spilled onto the floor, while moths covered with angry brown eyes upon their wings took flight, gravitating towards the bedside table light. “Help me,” the weak voice from inside begged, then choked and sputtered, no doubt on whatever else had occupied the space with Soma. 

Finally snapping out of his stupor, Ciel joined Bard and tore at the cocoon’s silken ligaments. “Almost done!” he called to Soma, using his hand to reach in blindly and pull. 

There was a harsh banging at the bedroom door. “Shit! He’s calling the cops, you guys,” came Sieglinde’s scared tone from the other side, “lemme in.”

At that moment, Soma fell from his confinement, heaving and gagging. Under his golden skin, they could make out dark crawling protrusions, like tapioca balls moving through a bubbletea straw along a network of paths that span his mostly naked body. “Lattice... out… window,” he instructed having heard their conversation. 

Lizzie opened the door and ushered Sieglinde in. She could hear Agni talking on the phone downstairs. “Excuse me, but fuck.” 

“Haha, you said butt fuck,” Bard laughed. He pushed up Soma’s window, still chuckling, and leaped out. Lizzie poked her head out to stick her middle finger at him, then told him to turn around so she and Sieglinde could climb down. “Neither of you are even wearing skirts!” he protested, but spun around anyway. 

While the girls escaped the insectorium that had become Soma’s room, Ciel picked up a hoodie and swim trunks from the floor, shook them free of bugs and helped the boy get dressed. “You’re coming with me, ‘kay?” he told Soma with both hands on his face so that he could focus on something other than what was crawling along the walls and ceiling. 

Shaking, Soma nodded faintly and stumbled to the window, arm thrown around Ciel’s shoulder for support. His legs had been bent in an awkward position, as if he'd been kneeling mid-air and now they felt like Jell-O. 

“Bard!” Ciel called out, looking below. He heard Agni slam down the rotary receiver and make his way towards the stairs. “Bard! Soma’s gonna need help. He's not steady.” He tossed the purple and gold comforter on the boy’s bed out the window, then stuck out his head, “You and the girls spot him, just in case!” 

With Ciel’s help, Soma managed to climb out feet first and felt his way around the lattice. He kept his eyes squeezed shut; and even when he felt something wriggle over his knuckles, he didn’t peek. 

“Keep going So-” Ciel encouraged but was cut short when a hand wrapped around his wrist and he was spun, face inches away from the white-haired guardian’s. 

“I can take you to your brother Ciel,” Agni said in a less-than-human voice; Ciel gagged on the rotting breath that washed over him. It smelled like the soup bones he bought for Sebastian that still had a tiny bit of meat on them, except with a hint of damp soil and shit. “Just gimme a bit of fear. That’s the price of admission.” 

Before Ciel could even respond, Agni’s mouth was pressed forcefully against his own, the older man’s tongue, prying the boy’s lips apart to spew a solitary millipede into it. Ciel bit hard, his jaws clamping down and he felt the arthropod split into multiple segments and blood from the lacerated tongue bathe his own. 

“Ya lithle thit,” Agni slurred, releasing Ciel instinctively, his chin stained and wet with crimson.

Ciel rushed to the window and threw himself out, hoping his friends were still ready with the blanket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We appreciate all the love you’ve, our readers, have given this fic! Your comments make our day <3 we hope you’ve enjoyed this chapter!


	4. Pet Semetary

Ciel had gotten lucky on his way down from Soma’s window. He’d managed to grab hold of the lattice to break his fall, but not without hurting his hand in the process. It made little difference, it was his legs he needed to high-tail it out of there and find cover _somewhere_ in Salem. They followed Sieglinde blindly through the town, staying out of the shadows when possible. They tried a church first, but the doors were locked and none of them wanted to risk further bad luck by breaking and entering such a place. Their homes were out of the question, no long safe after the episode at Soma’s place. And so that’s how they ended up where they were. 

“So look at these pictures,” Sieglinde told them on her knees, dealing out photographs one at a time on the dusty floor before her as she rhymed off the years they were taken, “1988, 1973, 1958 and 1943… what do you notice?” 

They were sitting in a circle in Salem’s courthouse-turned-museum, with lanterns they’d recovered from the giftshop. Ciel finished setting up the police scanner on the jury bench and walked over to see what they were all examining. “You mean other than the fifteen years they have between them?” 

“Yes, besides that, genius,” Sieglinde rolled her eyes, taking out two more photographs. “And here’s 1928 and 1913.” 

Soma shone his LED keychain over each of them; he was still shivering, despite the fact that it was an uncomfortably humid night. “They’re clearly all taken in the old town; look there’s Charter Street Cemetery, Old Witch Gaol … Proctor’s Ledge is there three times and the Parsonage Site.” 

Bard had been wandering around the museum, checking to see that all the doors were shut and no one had followed them in. He kept a flashlight in one hand and a small Swiss-Army knife he’d napped from the giftshop in the other. There were symbols, wards he assumed, carved into the moulding on top of the doors. He circled back to others when he’d heard them mention the Parsonage Site. “That place’s haunted. A few years ago, Edward and his friends had a Halloween party there and they said they saw ghosts.” 

“Edward probably saw Nina in her ashy foundation and thought he saw a ghost,” Lizzie said, rolling her eyes. “But I know a kid in my fencing class whose aunt was killed there. Fifteen years ago.” She held the photograph up and shone her flashlight on the center. In the background of the photo, just at the treeline, was a shadow that seemed to _move_. Lizzie rubbed her eyes, and brought the photograph closer. 

It was black and white and worn due to the time, but not distorted enough that she couldn’t make out the body lying on the grass. It was surrounded by police markers, and somewhat covered by a sheet. Its mouth, what was left of its face, was exposed. A horde of spiders bubbled out and scattered in various directions. Lizzie dropped the photograph with a scream. 

“You okay?” Bard asked, his flashlight shining on her face. 

She shuffled through the other pictures. “They moved. _It_ moves,” she hissed, laying the photographs out flat on the ground. Most of the pictures depicted just a limb, or even a head. Some had long hair slithering over the branches in the background. Some had claws drawing marks in the dirt. They all had bugs scuttering in dozens through the glossy ink. 

“But what is _It_?” Ciel demanded. He knew he wasn't half as scared as he should be; clearly a thing capable of this kind of carnage possessed more power than all of them combined. 

“What if it’s like a basilisk, or something?” Soma offered. “Remember in Harry Potter, it only came out every few years? Are there dead roosters around Salem?”

“Or an alien like in _Alien_?” Bard interjected. To be honest, the creature looked nothing of this dimension, much less this universe. And the way it was able to take on new forms… Bard didn’t think it was an alien, but saying it was something kill-able made him feel just a bit better. 

“We all agree what happened at Soma’s was a result of _It_ , right?” Lizzie was flipping through Sieglinde’s book. The rest of the group looked hesitant, but nodded. She felt particularly bad for Soma. His guardian was not the most pleasant of people, but he was not as bad as what the monster made him into. 

“I'm inclined to think it’s a curse of some sort,” Sieglinde said thoughtfully, fingering the pages of one of her books as she chewed her lip.

“By a witch?” Ciel asked, disappointed by her lack of originality. “I thought you didn't believe in witches…”

“There’s a lot I didn't believe in until a few days ago, but no, not a witch. Something the witches summoned. Maybe they asked for help from their oppressors? Maybe… they couldn't control it?” It was a grim thought. What chance did five kids have if men and women experienced with the art of magic couldn't keep the beast at bay?

“Why didn’t it kill us in the forest? Or at Soma’s?” Bard asked. His face looked grim under the soft glow of the flashlights. 

“Well, it’s a theory, but I think it needs something from us first. Like how you can’t eat a raw potato?” Lizzie said, skimming through the text. Most of it was hard to read, archaic words she couldn’t understand. 

“Are you comparing us to potatoes?” Bard laughed. 

“To the monster, that’s exactly what we are. And _It_ can’t eat our soul until… It doesn’t say.” Lizzie rolled her eyes, flipped more urgently through the book. 

“Whatever it is, we’re safe as long as we stay in here,” Soma mumbled, gripping the sheet around his shoulders a bit tighter. His knuckles were damn near white with the sheer force of it. “Agni,” he sniffed, “said they made sure nothing evil could cross these thresholds. See, there’s those etching along the frames, and that yellowish colour isn't paint, that’s turmeric that's been applied over white. And if you look outside, the horticultural society grows sage. They had to be extra cautious with all the supernatural stuff going on.”

Sieglinde almost argued with Soma out of habit, resisted the urge to drywash her face in exasperation. How many times had they had the conversation about demons and witches and things that go bump in the night? How many times had she been wrong? She took out a Nokia and snapped pictures of the images they had as a just in case. They needed proof if they were going to seek help from the adults and if the originals got damaged...

Soma turned the images over after the girl had finished with them, feeling ill-at-ease, like they were giving someone the opportunity to spy on them if they were turned up.

Ciel, who’d been curious about the sage had wandered to the nearest window to see; he’d never noticed it ever being there before, but what did he know? Lizzie got her hair chopped a good seven inches last year and it took him three months to notice. 

“Ciel, stop right there!” Sieglinde called out scrolling through her pictures. She’d only taken six of them, but a seventh materialized out of nowhere. She was sure she hadn't taken this one; the foreground was of Ciel looking out the window, and just outside by the large oak tree were three stools. Then, three kids with bags over their head. The image changed again and they were standing on the stools with nooses around their necks, bags gone to reveal the familiar faces of her bullies. 

“Shit fuck shit! What the hell is going on!” Ciel was plastered against the window pane, torn between needing to see and wanting to close his eyes. It wasn't just because of what he _knew_ was going to happen, but the blank looks on those kids’ faces were almost worse than any bizarro zombie- brother he’d seen. “Why aren't they struggling? Why aren't they trying to take those things off? Their hands aren't even tied!” 

Lizzie rushed to the window beside him and pressed her palms flat against the glass. The bodies hung like lanterns from branches, swaying softly in the summer breeze. “Why would it kill them?” Lizzie asked. 

“Cause it’s a monster?” Bard was standing behind her, arms crossed and brows dipping downwards in the center of his forehead. 

“No, why would it kill them?” They were the worst kids in Salem. They terrorized and bullied Lizzie constantly at school, hadn’t stopped until she pulled her saber on them in an alleyway. One of them, the body hanging farthest left, had peed his pants. And five months ago, they’d nearly beat the twins to death in the school’s soccer field. 

Ciel pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to unsee everything. Bursts of light lit up the blackness behind his lids as he tried to think. His brother, these boys, they had nothing in common, so why had _it_ gone after them. “Sullivan, in those pictures, are all the victims male?”

“N-no, in 1973, eight kids went missing, five were recovered. Of them, there was an Irene, a Paula and a Hannah,” she read from the notes scrawled in neat calligraphy. 

“Wait, you said, _kids_ went missing. Are all the victims children?” Ciel sat next to her, his index fingers scanning the pages she was looking through, identifying the ages of the victims. The youngest was three and the oldest was fifteen. 

“It seems that way,” Sieglinde answered solemnly, occasionally glancing at the newest photograph on her phone. There was no sight of the bodies anymore, not with the long, black curtain of hair obstructing the view in the window. 

Lizzie backed away. The museum had four large windows in the room the kids had chosen to camp out in. The hair spanned across all of them. “It can’t get in, right?” she asked Soma. She wished she had her saber, a stick, something long and pointy. 

“It shouldn’t be able to,” Soma whispered, afraid to jinx them all by saying so. He scooted closer to Lizzie, knowing full-well she was the bravest among them, hoping her courage would somehow rub off on him a little. 

“Maybe we should send Bard out to reinforce the wards,” Ciel joked to break the tension, but his eyes never left the scrapbook. 

“I hate you,” Bard said, only partially smiling. “I’m staying right here, where Soma says it’s safe.” He joined Sieglinde on the floor and flipped through the pages of the book. Not one for reading, he gave up after a couple of minutes. “Did you find anything on how to kill it?” he asked.

“I think so, but I’m not really all that skilled in latin, so I can’t be sure,” Sieglinde told the group. She’d removed a yellowed piece of parchment that had been folded sloppily and stuffed in a pouch at the back of the book. “Like, the title makes sense; it’s a banishment of some sort. Um… we need to each give up something important to us as an offering, draw a pentagram in the soil that hasn’t seen much light-- the forest I guess, and it needs to be on the eve of a full moon. When’s the next full moon?” 

Ciel brought a lantern to the calendar hanging near the entrance of the courthouse that held information on various appointments and tours. “Tomorrow. So you’re telling me, if we don’t do this tonight…”

“We’d need to wait another month. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t even do this for another week,” Sieglinde pleaded, bringing her hand up to cradle her head, sounding weaker than she ever had. “And we have five of us, one for each point of the pentagra-”

“Uh-uh, I’m not doing it.” Soma said firmly, shaking his head. “Nope. I’m not screwing with that thing. You guys weren’t cocooned for a day. You didn’t feel those bugs crawling under your skin. I don’t even know if I have a guardian to go home to!” 

“Soma, I don’t think any of it’s actually real.” Bard nodded toward Sieglinde and recounted how she’d gotten attacked earlier in the forest. Despite the creature vomiting on the poor girl, she’d walked away without scratch marks or vomit on her skin. Bard grimaced, looked back outside to the bodies behind the black mess of hair. “Maybe some of it’s real. But Agni should be fine. That probably wasn’t even him. The real Agni wouldn’t attack any of us.” Bard didn’t know that for sure, but it was what Soma needed to hear, so he said it. “Should we call the police about those guys?” Bard clapped Soma on the back, hoping that gave him some courage to continue with Sieglinde’s plan. Bard knew loss. He knew it like a fish knew water. And fish in oceans did not need more water. 

“Okay. So tonight then?” Lizzie asked. She was playing with the hem of her shirt, fingers needing to fidget while her mind went haywire. “I’ll give up my saber.” It was at home, proudly displayed above the fireplace in her living room. “Soma?” 

“Fine. I say we call the cops just before we leave, that way, maybe it’ll distract the monster,” he told them, twisting his plum-coloured locks between his fingers. “I can give up the _mangala sutra_ I had for Mina. It was my mom’s, but I’ll have enough time to get another by the time I meet her again -- _if_ I meet her again.” All the damned cities Agni could have chosen to move to, and this is where they had landed. True, he wouldn’t have made the friends he had now anywhere else, but to lose the only attachment he had to his bride-to-be, selected by his parents, was something like a kick in the teeth. 

“I think I’ll have to give up this book. It’s literally the most important thing I have,” Sieglinde offered, waiting for their rebuff. It never came and it was a sign of how dire the situation was. “Of course I’ll photocopy it, we _will_ have time to get our belongings and stuff, right?” 

Ciel rose to his feet, and dusted himself off, “Yeah, we’ll need to do it in partners though. Maybe me, you and Soma can go together and Lizzie and Bard can go together. We can meet up in an hour, at the tent?” 

“That’s fine,” Sieglinde agreed. “What are you bringing? Better to decide now, Ciel, we don’t have time to wait around while you hem and haw over your possessions.” 

“Don’t worry about it; it’ll be something of my brother’s, most likely his collection of baseball cards, it’s really all I have left of him.” A knot formed at the pit of Ciel’s stomach at the thought of it. Somehow, it made his loss a reality he’d been vehemently trying to deny. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Bard said, gathering up the photographs on the floor to hand to Sieglinde. He bundled up Soma’s blanket and dumped it into the boy’s arms. “I have a hunting knife my dad gave me before he died. That should do the trick, right?” He smiled, despite the painful look in his eyes. He and Lizzie went to the doors, and turned to give one last stare at the windows. The hair was gone now, as were the bodies. So much for calling the cops. “Don’t any of you assholes die on me,” Bard said, pointing like a teacher to Ciel, Soma, and Sieglinde. He kicked open the door and led Lizzie out into the darkness.

***

“Ciel, you can’t do this!” Soma protested for what felt the millionth time, since they’d left Ciel’s. “Look, I bought your brother’s cards. You can still change your mind. I’m sure Bard and Lizzie won’t mind if we’re late. We can go back. Sully, tell him. ”

Sieglinde’s eyes were damp, tears clinging for dear life to her long lashes. She’d hidden them from Ciel. She knew his decision was not a rash one; he’d been silent the whole time they’d been collecting their prized possessions and when he bypassed his porch to go directly to the little shelter, she ran after him, pleading with him to change his mind. Nothing worked. No amount of begging or reasoning, so this time, she tried guilting. “Your brother wouldn’t have wanted this.” 

Sebastian whined in the wagon Ciel pulled behind him. He’d been happy enough to let himself get into the wagon again, desperate for the boy’s attention after he’d missed him the whole day, but as they neared the forest, he became skittish, more vocal. The wolfhound even tried to jump out, each time hurting himself as he was unable to run away as he’d have liked. It was almost as if he knew the fate that awaited him. “My brother didn’t want to die, either. But he did. You saw what happened to those kids today. You _know_ what’s happened every fifteen years. If we can stop it for good, I’m ready to put my life on the line. And so’s Sebastian, right boy?” 

Lizzie ran down the trail, saber in hand. She pointed it at the dog with a frown. “What’re you doing with Sebby?” The wolfhound whined happily at the sight of Elizabeth who smelled like vanilla and gave wonderful belly rubs. She scratched his ear with her empty hand and inspected his injured legs. “Is he like an alarm? To warn us when the monster shows up?” 

Sieglinde pressed her lips together and shook her head. Soma actually choked on a sob and Ciel took a deep calming breath before moving past them so he wouldn’t have to see their accusatory glares when he answered, “Let’s just get this over with.” 

Lizzie faltered, hand gripping tight on Sebastian’s collar. “You’re...You’re killing the dog?” she asked, bewildered. They were at the tent now, and Bard, who was in the middle of strategically setting up flashlights so they wouldn’t be standing in the dark, looked up with wide eyes. 

Ciel was infuriated. Why did Lizzie have to ask all these questions? Why couldn’t she put two and two together? “Sullivan,” he asked the black-haired girl, “did your ritual not ask for what was most important?” 

“Yes, but…”

“You all know _he_ loved Sebastian more than anything and because of that, he’s the most valuable thing in my possession. Don’t… don’t look at me like that Lizzie.” Ciel’s hands balled into fists at his sides, shaking, staving off a deluge of tears that were welling up at the corner. He didn’t want to cry in front of everyone, but the way they were judging him, with pity, revulsion, fear and despondency, made him wonder which would have best reflected his twin’s piercing blue eyes.

It was the sound of the dog’s drawn-out lament that snapped Ciel out of whatever state of consternation he was in. He held his hand out to Bard and said, “Blanket.” 

Lizzie was on the verge of tears. She covered her mouth with her hand and watched as Ciel pulled the wagon away from the clearing. The sound of the wheels rolling stopped behind the nearest tree. At the first sound of Sebastian’s whimper, Lizzie lurched forward, but Bard and Soma held her back, told her it was gonna be okay. Sebastian’s muffled yelps became too much; she hid her face in Soma’s shirt and waited for Ciel to come back out. It lasted too long, dragged for a minute more than any of them could bear. They stood with bated breath and clenched fists, waiting for the dog’s cries to cease. 

They’d known Sebastian since he was a puppy, had all been there the day the Phantomhives first brought him home. He’d rushed around his new home with the energy only a puppy would have, yipping excitedly at the kids and rolling over for scratches. Now, Ciel wheeled him back out, and he was limp and unresponsive, covered in Soma’s comforter. 

Sieglinde remembered reading somewhere that when fighting monsters, sometimes people had to become one themselves. Tonight Ciel had undergone that metamorphosis and she wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from it. She busied herself dragging her foot along the earth, tracing a pentagram, then going over it again to make sure the imprint was deep. They all watched her light the fire at the center, throwing kindling, and newspapers they’d brought from home, waiting for it to get angrier. 

She took her place at the head of the star-shape and asked the others to find a point. “I have to recite this in two parts. The first should change the flame from orange to blue to make it hot enough to devour our…” she swallowed the lump in her throat, “our possessions. And after the second part, we toss them in. Are you ready?” 

They nodded, some more fervently than others, but each wore a mask of grim determination. The preliminary incantation was the long one, but she managed, taking her time to not stumble over words. 

The full moon overhead and the fire in the center of the pentagram soon became the only sources of light. The flashlights Bard had set up flickered, flipped themselves on and off so fast it made his vision spotty. He blinked the red circles from his eyes and gritted his teeth at the sight of the single flashlight pointing directly at Ciel. _It_ was a silhouette of a boy, taller than Bard but leaner, head cocked to the side. It’s hair flat, despite the wind. And it’s pupils and thin, smiling mouth glowed despite the blackness of its silhouette. A horrific smiling face against a coal black sky. 

With one hand, it swatted away the tent, and now loomed just behind where Lizzie stood across from Ciel. It bellowed, a high pitch sound that made them all want to cover their ears. The circle couldn’t be broken; their hands had to stay clasped with one another. 

The creature did not touch them or try to break them apart. It stood at a safe distance from the fire, almost curiously watching their ritual. When Sieglinde reached the end of her incantation, the monster convulsed. It leaped across the circle, pressed its rotting skin against Ciel’s forehead and chanted in its own guttural tongue. It was shorter now, the same height as Ciel. It scratched at his skin and cursed at him while wearing his brother’s face. “You’re trying to get rid of me? Me, Ciel? I’m your twin. You said you loved me!” Bony hands cupped his face, forced him to look into the hollowed eyes of his brother. “Tell them to stop.” 

Wordlessly, Ciel stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back. He searched for any sign of recognition, a flash of blue, a hint of sincerity behind the plea and all he saw were orbs of gaping nothingness. He’d always won their games of _Don’t Blink_ , able to wait out his brother and now his eyes watered with the pain of keeping them open. Something behind them was going numb and shadows were moving at their edges, clouding his periphery. 

“Bard, do it,” Ciel gritted through clenched teeth, eyes wide, swimming with something thicker than tears. It poured down his face, oozing along his soft jawline, cumulated at his chin and was licked up by a cold, scaly tongue. The same putrid breath washed his face as a few hours ago and this time Ciel leaned in, mouth opened of its own accord to take in whatever he needed to buy them some minutes. 

Bard did not hesitate. Before they’d set the fire, the kids had piled their sacrifices on the wagon by Sebastian’s body. Bard kicked the wagon, heavy with Sebastian’s dead body, into the flames, which ignited to two times its size and glowed a brilliant blue. 

The monster growled, turned its head to snarl and bear its fangs at him. It shook as Sieglinde chanted and their items burned. Eyes became too large for its face, limbs bent in grotesque ways. Beetles and wasps flew from its mouth; cicadas filled the air with their screeches. The bugs swarmed the pentagram, wings slapping against the kids’ faces as they closed their eyes and mouths in horror. 

Then the swarm ceased and the night fell silent.

***

Everything was quiet.

The air was stale. 

And it was dark. 

Darker than the forest at night without a moon. Darker than squeezing your eyes to shut something out. At least in those instances, light manages to seep through, either the stars give off a glow through the clouds, or your lids aren’t opaque enough to cast out a light beaming overhead. 

But this was different. 

Ciel tasted his own breath in his mouth, sour and stagnant on his tongue, felt the restraints around his wrists and ankles boring into the flesh and his pulse beating madly against them. The smell of Aspirin and cleaning products burned the inside of his nose and he tried to bring his hand up to cover it, but without success. The sound of stretched polyester was louder than it should have been in his ears, but with each sense exaggerated, he shouldn’t have been surprised, nor should the words that filtered through the crack of a nearby door as it was pushed open have shocked him. 

“The sedative should be wearing off soon. I’m sorry Mrs. Phantomhive, but after he clawed at his eyes like that the last time he woke up, we had no other choice.”

“Have you talked to him yet? Asked him why he did that thing to Sebastian?” 

“He hasn’t been conscious long enough to even speak. Once we’re sure he won’t harm himself or others, we’ll move him to the second floor with the other patients. I’m glad you admitted him here, rather than North Shore Children’s Hospital. At Taunton State Hospital, he’ll get the help he needs.” 

Vincent stood from his son’s bedside and buttoned up his suit jacket. He’d finished signing all the necessary paper works a while ago and now handed them over to the doctor. Vincent’s business card was clipped to the top page. He tapped it, frowning at his son’s bandaged eyes. “If he needs anything, call us.” The watch on Vincent’s wrist read four pm. He pulled a phone from his breast pocket and nodded at his wife. “Let’s go, Rachel. I have a meeting. He’ll be fine here, won’t he, Doc?” Vincent didn’t wait for the doctor to reply. He pressed the phone to his ear and let the door close behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember to leave comments and kudos to let us know what you think!


	5. Misery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally October and AAM is all about those spoopy vibes!  
> We hope you enjoy this update <3  
> Let us know what you think please!

Ciel kept his hands on his lap when the box of tissues was pushed across the desk that separated he and the doctor. He wouldn’t need any. He wasn’t going to cry. 

Of course he wanted to. He’d felt the familiar prickling every time he thought about that night, but nothing ever came out; and it wasn’t for lack of trying. He’d blinked long lashes against the abrasive cotton, then forced himself to keep his eyes wide open. He pinched himself, scratched himself, hit his head against the wall until they tied him up. Nothing worked. If he could just cry, even out of physical pain, it might ease the knot in his gut, or loosen the imaginary noose around his neck, choking him. Did tear ducts break when a heart shattered? 

The doctor droned and drawled, and all Ciel could focus on was _how_ she was saying something rather than _what_ she was saying. She used a soft, patronizing tone, as if to emphasize how broken he was and it got under his skin. 

“Can you please get to your point?” Ciel finally interrupted dry-mouthed, bringing his feet up onto the chair, hugging his legs as he slumped in the uncomfortable upholstered leather. 

Doctor Dalles placed her clipboard on her lap and pulled off her eyeglasses. She knew her patient couldn’t see her, so she took the opportunity to rub her eyes, thankful she’d forgone the makeup today. “I believe the loss of your eyesight is a psychosomatic development, more so than it is biological. Prescribing you medication would not fix it, but there are certain things we can do. Exercises we can try. As with any psychological development, the first step is reliant on you.” She poured him a glass of water and pressed it into his hands. “Will you let us help you?” 

Ciel brought the glass to his lips, but only to wet them; he didn't bother drinking. Everything had become unpalatable. Water should have been a safe option owing to the fact that it had no taste, but as the glass neared his face, all he could smell was stagnant decay, as though the good doctor had served him swampy water. “Well, it’s not like I'm here for fun, is it? What’re you gonna do? Poke my brain? Have me draw pretty pictures? Make me sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya with the other crazies?”

“We don’t use the word crazy here,” the doctor replied. She slipped her glasses back on her face. “Is that what you would like to do? Sit and talk and with the other patients?” Her voice was soft, steady, and she spoke as if Ciel was an injured rabbit she’d happened upon in the wild. 

“No. I’d rather go back to my room and get strapped down again.” Ciel rolled his eyes, belatedly realizing that the gesture was lost on the doctor since his eyes were bandaged. He hoped enough sarcasm had oozed from his words. They seemed to take everything so seriously here; like when he told the orderly he would kill him if he touched him when they had first brought him in. He obviously hadn't meant it, he was twelve and scrawny and blind and didn't stand a chance. It hadn’t stopped them from tranquilizing him though. He went down so fast that he didn't remember hitting the floor. “Are there at least any kids’ groups?” Already, he missed Liz, Sieglinde and Soma. And maybe even Bard too.

“How about I have someone take you around so you can meet everyone?” Her chair scraped against the ground as she stood. “We can end the session early today, and I’ll arrange for you to join a group session as well.” The door opened and Doctor Dalles waved in an orderly. “Give our newest charge a grand tour. Let him meet the others.” She tapped Ciel’s shoulder, then took his hand and placed it into the orderly’s. “Be a good boy now.” 

They’d given Ciel a walking stick, the kind that blind people were seen with, but hadn't bothered instructing him on how to use it. He went down the hall, hand in hand with the youngish-sounding orderly as he prattled on about the weather. Ciel swung the stick in wide arcs before him; it collided with the wall more often than not, and he was petulant enough to allow it to crash into oncoming traffic, cursing them out afterwards for _not looking where they were going_. 

Fifteen minutes had gone by when Ciel finally halted in the cafeteria, discouraged and disappointed by every utterance that had slipped past Finny’s lips. “You led me to the library, to the games room and now the cafeteria. I met about forty people whose names I don't even care to remember. Is there _anyone_ fun or interesting in this place so I don't lose it?” He only needed one person. One friend so he could stop being so homesick. One person to distract him from the record of blame and guilt and shame that played on repeat in his head. 

“Fun?” Finny scratched the back of his head and pursed his lips. He’d been working at Taunton State Hospital for a year. One year of restlessness and more emotional baggage than he could lift onto his already weathered shoulders. He was young, late twenties, but he’d spent his previous years carrying a lot more than he’d bargained for. From the looks of the kid haphazardly swinging his walking stick at everything unfortunate enough to cross his path, Finny could tell Ciel was going to be carrying a lot of shit too. 

You gotta be strong for that sort of thing. Emotional baggage, though figurative weight-wise, was heavier than a stack of dumbbells. Finny should know. Knew. And this kid, scrawny and blind-but-not-really, was not strong enough for whatever shit he’d dealt with before getting here. Finny put a hand on Ciel’s shoulder and led him to the common room. 

Taunton State was old, and creaking, and most probably haunted, but it was Finny’s home away from home now and the least he could do was help shape it that way for the kid he was holding onto. Maybe Ciel won’t see the building’s cracking plaster or moss-covered bricks. He’d hear the rickety stairs and the swinging doors in dire lack of oil, everyone within a mile radius did, but not seeing had its advantages. Finny’s grandmother was blind, and she’d always seen more than he ever could. 

The common room sat at the heart of Taunton. Was the heart of Taunton. It had a little TV that mostly just played various sports tournaments. There were sets of puzzles and board games in a locked cabinet against the wall. The key hung along its siblings on a chain attached to Finny’s belt loop. “This about does it in terms of fun for us,” he exclaimed, arms spread wide like he was trying to embrace the room. “We got games, television, even a small library you can borrow from when you regain your sight. We have audiobooks too, and headphones.”

Ciel only heard the words _borrow, sight_ and _headphones_ over the din of people in the common room. Some of them were talking to themselves, others were rocking in their creaky chairs, humming erratically. He heard the distinct tune of The Price is Right being whistled to his left, while someone sang off-key in accompaniment. A board and game pieces were flung off a nearby table and by the back and forth yelling of “sorry!”, “SORRY!”, “sorry!” he assumed someone had failed to win the popular board game whose namesake encouraged the cacophony. But the worst were the quiet moments in between outbursts. That’s when the heard the whisper of cloth shoes over linoleum or the whimpering laments for family members and pleas to go home. It took all of Ciel’s restraint not to cover his ears or turn tail and try to find his room on his own. 

As it was, he held Finny’s hand in a death grip and was _thisclose_ to begging him not to leave him here. How was he supposed to defend himself against anyone if he couldn't see them coming? How would he know to duck if something came his way? 

He was about to open his mouth, when in his periphery, a shadow stalked past and rose tiny hairs on his arms as it did. He blinked behind his bandages, head swiveling this way and that to discern it among the patients, not to greet it, but to go in the opposite direction. It only took the span of three heartbeats for him to realize what he must look like, _the blind boy trying to see_ , he would fit right in with these nutjobs. He gave up his search, knowing that in his current condition, it would have been worthless. Maybe people who lost their sight experienced something similar to people who lost parts of their bodies? Phantom limb syndrome, was it? But instead of feeling an arm or a leg, they caught glimpses of something instead? He filed the question away for later; it would be one to ask Sullivan if she ever came to visit. 

“I don't want to stay here. Can I go outside?” Ciel asked, already taking a step back and pulling the orderly with him. 

“We have time allotted for patients to spend outside. If you want, I’ll sign you up for the next open slot.” Finny spotted a patient lurking around the corner in the back of the room. His long hair coiled between his fingertips. His fringe hid his face for the most part, but Finny knew he was watching them. “Let’s go to your new room, Ciel!” he said, smiling brightly even though the small boy couldn’t see it. Finny steered them away from the patient in the corner. 

Ciel listened as the orderly described his new home. Taunton was made up of some forty buildings, but he, as a patient would likely only ever know two of them. The one where he’d spent the first week sedated was the medical building; he would be required to get weekly checkups for his eyes and his health, or if god forbid, an emergency arose. The building whose halls he was traipsing at the moment was where he’d get on with his daily activities: eat, sleep, shit, _therapize_. He’d been worried that he would need to spend the next however many weeks being led by someone, until Finny informed him that the edifice was organized into a giant square -- popular rooms at the center (library, mess hall, common room) and sleeping rooms on the periphery. On each floor the stairs were located at the north and south ends and the exits were similarly located on the first floor. 

_Easy peasy_ , Ciel thought to himself when he was sure the blond had been gone at least three minutes. Finny’s parting words had been something to the effect of ‘go and explore, it’s safe, the people are friendly and I’ll come get you for dinner’, so Ciel took him up on it. He _explored_ the hall, and when he got to the end, his hands _explored_ about ten doors, until one was unlocked and a gust of late summer air came shooting in. Purely out of habit, he looked around to make sure he wasn’t about to be caught, then snuck outside with his walking stick. 

The path was rough and gravelly, but he stayed near what he thought was the center by adjusting his steps whenever his stick detected a grassy patch. He counted steps to try to remember how far from the building he was getting, but as the sound of car doors slamming and engines coming to life grew closer, he was forced to turn around and couldn’t be bothered to subtract the amount of steps he had to go back. 

A few people walked past, one of them bidding him a _hello_ and another asking if she could help him find something. 

“I’m looking for the park,” he told her rather than asked, trying not to sound new to the institution. 

“Oh, not much use for a park here, my dear. Not a lot of kids passing thru. I mean, there are _some_ , but they don’t stay very long. There is a lovely sitting area out back, close to the man-made lake where some people go to feed the ducks. I can bring you there if you want?” 

She sounded too young to have the common sense NOT to bring a _blind_ child his age near water, but he didn’t protest. If anything, he was grateful, the area sounded reminiscent of the watering hole, where he and his friends used to skip rocks and sail toy boats. “Thank you, I’d like that,” he said appreciatively, giving her a pleasant smile that didn’t quite reach his concealed eyes. 

She left him on a bench some ten feet away from the shore (or so she said) after he thanked her again and told her she didn’t have to come get him, that the orderlies knew he was coming outside and would fetch him for dinner. Miraculously, she bought it and he breathed a contented sigh of relief when he was finally alone. 

With white bandages over his eyes, Ciel couldn’t see the shadow creeping up on him. The afternoon sun bent the shadow out of shape so that it resembled one of a short, pudgy man with one arm, instead of the young boy who was actually pretty tall for his age. 

He’d spotted Ciel fumbling through the hallways inside, fingers patting down doors for their handles before trying to force them open. Most doors in Taunton were locked, or housed the more violent patients (and thus were double locked). He’d followed Ciel down the hallways and out into the parking lot. Usually, patients wouldn’t be able to walk out on their own, but the secretary manning the front desk had her face buried in a thick book. He’d hung back when Ciel was talking to the woman, and now stood by a tree by the bench. 

The lake was sparkling, and a handful of geese were waddling into the water. They screamed at each other while stretching out their brown wings. When one got too close, the boy by the tree stepped out and shooed it away with his hand. He glanced back at Ciel, who looked so fragile and naive. He’d abandoned his walking stick. The fact that he’d gotten out here at all was amazing. 

“It’s six feet away.” Ciel tilted his head towards the sound. “The lady was wrong. The lake is six feet away. Didn’t want you falling in.” Although that would have been a little funny, or maybe his sense of humor was just a bit fucked up. He sat down on the bench by Ciel, but kept enough distance between them. “I’m Sebastian.” 

Ciel winced at the name, shifting unconsciously away from the voice. 

Pulses of dull pain gnawed away at his memory, tugged at the back of his brain like a dog leash. Images of a forest, a wagon, a blanket and a listless wolfhound burst in front of his unseeing eyes, the way white spots of light swam there when one rubbed their eyes too long. 

Clammy hands wrung themselves in his lap and when he finally acknowledged the boy -- and it was a boy, he could tell by the youthful timber of his voice -- it was after a series of shallow breaths and a disparaging shrug. “What’s it to you if I drown?” 

Sebastian frowned. He hadn’t expected to be asked such a morbid question from a twelve year old in the middle of a park. The hospital and its many buildings loomed behind them, but it was far and the sun was at that point in the sky where there were barely any shadows on the ground. It didn’t feel like the grounds of a hospital. Didn’t feel morbid. 

“You’re the only other kid here,” Sebastian said, sounding a bit shy. His fingers crossed and uncrossed in his lap. “Plus there’s a camera behind us, about ten feet up. If you drown, they’re gonna see I didn’t do anything to help you, and I’m trying to get out of here on good behavior.” His words were a little shaky, voice a bit too low. He forced his hands back into the pockets of his Taunton administered white cotton pants. 

Ciel turned to his left, facing Sebastian, and put his middle finger high up overhead in the direction he assume was _behind_ them. He waved it around, rotating his wrist, then for good measure brought the other one up too. Already, he was sick of people watching him, of examining him like he was some repulsive bug under a microscope, or better yet, like roadkill some of the neighbourhood kids would poke sticks at to get it to twitch after it was newly dead. 

“Did Finny send you out here to spy on me?” he grumbled, leaning over to pat the ground when he realized he’d let his stick fall somewhere. As small as he was, the tips of his fingers barely grazed the prickly grass; he’d have to get on his hands and knees to find anything. Maybe he hadn’t been as stealthy as he thought, the orderly could have stood there, laughing at him for all Ciel knew, as he stumbled down the hall. “Trying to rack up those good boy points by doing nice deeds?” 

Sebastian kicked the stick up with his foot and poked the end of it into Ciel’s hand. It was a flimsy little thing, the stick, although the same could be said of Ciel and his hands. 

“Finny has other patients to fuss over,” Sebastian said, thinking of the old man with the long hair. People don’t smile like that. Shouldn’t smile like that. He made a note to warn Ciel about him later. “What, you don’t want any of those points? They let you out if they think they succeeded in rewiring you.” He glanced back at the camera as he talked. It swiveled to the side, ignoring them. 

If there was something worse than being watched all the time, it was the idea that there was nothing _out there_ waiting for him. His brother was gone. His dog was gone. His friends had witnessed his savagery first hand, so whatever lingering respect they had for him was gone. His parents had abandoned him to this place, so they were as good as dead. 

No, he was wrong. _Something_ was waiting for him. It was buried deep in Salem’s forest amidst the wet dirt and decaying vegetation. It was a feeling he couldn’t shake. Something that kept propping up in his dreams. Despite all their best efforts, he knew it was still there. Waiting. A monster. The apotheosis of all monsters. 

Ciel got up from the bench and stretched. He hadn't been sitting there long, but the after effects of the sedatives still lingered in his blood, making him feel a little numb, both emotionally and physically. “How close are you to convincing them you're all better?” He tapped his stick in front of himself and away from the lake and found the gravelly path. “Just asking, so I know how long I have to fake an interest in these conversations.”

“You’re kind of a shitty conversationalist, huh.” Sebastian watched Ciel walk toward a cluster of decorative rocks, stick hovering just over the tip of the foot tall boulders. He nudged Ciel away at the last second, then took out a bottle of Purell from his pockets. The cuts on his hands stung as he rubbed a copious amount of sanitizer into his palm. “You don’t like me,” he said, tucking the bottle safely back. “Fine. I was gonna tell you about the secret room in the library, but whatever. You don’t look like the type to care about necromancy books anyway.” The camera was starting to make its way back to them. Sebastian stared at it. Was there really someone sitting there watching the monitors? The hospital was so understaffed it seemed unlikely. 

It was likely a coincidence, but as Sebastian was distracted by the camera, Ciel’s temper boiled over and he turned on his heel, grabbing a fistful of the other boy’s shirt. He yanked hard on the rough cotton, but Sebastian didn’t budge; either he’d not been taken at all by surprise, or he was significantly larger than Ciel. “You don’t have to be blind to know this place isn’t Hogwarts. There aren’t any moving stairs or ghost books, so don’t fuck with me… I’ve seen more shit in the last month than you have in your eight years,” he jibed, drawing in a shaky breath and unsuccessfully pushing the boy away when he released him. 

“Hang on, you think I’m eight?” Laughter bubbled from Sebastian’s mouth. He fixed his hospital regulation shirt and mumbled under his breath that Ciel’s hands were clean. Nothing to fret over. “That would make you really short, you know. I’m almost a foot taller than you.” He wanted to reach out and pat the other boy’s hair. It looked fluffy and clean, but he flexed his hands and kept them stiff at his side. “And there is a secret room. You gotta get to it at night or Taunton’s human guard dogs will haul you out. You seem smart,” he paused for dramatic effect, “ish. But I doubt you’ll be able to figure out how to undo the lock on your door.” He whistled and walked ahead, feet kicking a few loose stones into Ciel’s path. 

“Wait!” Ciel chased after the boy, tripping over his own feet. He fell to the ground hard, scraping his hands on the gravel and bruising his knees. “Wait! What do you mean _lock on your door_? They lock us in at night? They can’t do that!” He picked himself up, stick still in hand and followed the whistling into the building. His previous anger turned to anxiety; if they locked him in, sure it kept bad things out, but what if those things appeared _inside_ his room? He wouldn’t stand a chance if he couldn’t run away. “Isn’t that a violation of my rights or something?” he babbled on in a hissed tone, hoping Sebastian was the only one within earshot. “It’s not like I'm dangerous or a criminal… or anything.”

“Ha! What rights?” Sebastian held the door open with his foot and let it swing close behind them. The secretary no longer had her book, and was now greeting visitors as they entered. Frowning, Sebastian ducked behind an elderly couple at the elevator, hoping Ciel would follow the sound of his voice. “Bedtime is at nine. Doors are checked and locked by 9:30 on the dot. A couple of years ago, a group of patients escaped and nearly killed an orderly in the process.” 

The elevator stopped on the second floor and Sebastian got out, yanking Ciel with him. Once they were safe in the hallway leading to the cafeteria, Sebastian released the pinch of fabric he was holding on to. The floor was nearly empty, despite dinner being in a few minutes. “Got you safely back inside, so I’m gonna go now,” Sebastian said. He stepped away, pausing at the corner to watch Ciel feel around with his walking stick. He’d hoped Ciel would call after him, tell him to stay or something. When he doesn’t, Sebastian frowns, but lingers around just in case. 

Ciel’s head whipped in the direction of Sebastian’s retreating footsteps. He’d been tempted to follow; so far, the other boy was the only person he’d met that hadn’t patronized him. He had Sullivan’s knowledge, Soma’s resourcefulness, Lizzie’s protectiveness and Bard’s abruptness. It was probably why he seemed so familiar. It also helped that he was a kid, and smelled of rubbing alcohol rather than pee and aspirin. 

From the corner of his left eye, he caught a glimpse of the shadow again, this time more distinct, despite the fact that it stood at the center of a smoke-laden mist. He blinked three times before remembering the bandages around his eyes. A swell of hope made its way to his chest; if he could see the shadow through the cotton, perhaps his sight had returned? If he took the bandages off, maybe he would finally know to whom the identity of the shadow belonged. 

His hand was over his left eye in the process of tearing the strip away when suddenly a thunderous bellow to his right that made him practically jump out of his skin. 

“KIDDDDDDDD!” The voice was slurred, more than drunk-- on the edge of mental instability, then was followed by an incessant cackling. 

His adrenaline took over his body, guiding his legs one-hundred and eighty degrees to escape the perceived threat he could hear lumbering towards him. Then he hit a wall. Well, a flesh wall. A flesh wall wearing what felt like scrubs, with a higher-pitched toned that he recognized immediately. 

“F-finny!” 

“Ciel, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” the orderly blurted, clearly out of breath after having run the perimeter of the extensive hospital grounds. Finny ushered him out of the room and led him to the elevator again. “And look at the state of your pants. Were you outside after I told you not to go? It’s not safe you know, especially when you can’t see anything.” 

They were going down, that much Ciel was sure of. Back to his room? Was he going to get locked up for the night for having broken the rules? His pulse picked up again, fuelled by a mixture of anxiety and dread. “I’m sorry.” The proclamation was much louder than it needed to be in the confines of the small elevator. The sound of it echoed, bounced off the walls, and reinforced just how tiny the space was. His hands broke out into a sweat and he took quick, shallow breaths; how strange that he hadn’t felt this panic with Sebastian minutes ago. 

By the time they reached the first floor, his bandage had slipped down his left eye, onto his cheek. The world was still black. Whatever forgotten hope he had that he could see again immediately vanished. “I won’t do it again. Just don’t punish me.” 

Finny tsked sympathetically, and his deft fingers, redressed the covering. “Punish you? This isn’t prison, Ciel.” 

That was debatable. 

“I told you I was going to come find you for dinner. I’m just bringing you back to your room to get changed first, then I’ll tend to your hands. You can’t go into the mess hall looking like that.”

***

While he ate dinner, Finny no doubt told Doctor Dalles about his adventure outside, which was why he now found himself on the fifth floor rather than the first. It didn’t really matter, outdoors hadn’t been that spectacular anyway, it’s not like he could appreciate the view. He stripped down to his underwear and undershirt and sat rigidly in his bed, playing out imaginary conversations with his friends as a means of distraction as he waited for the tell-tail click of a door being locked for the evening.

The clock outside ticked away the minutes, disrupted as it approached on 9:30 by a distinctive click of the door’s lock. Keys jangled on a ring accompanied by the sound of heels tapping down the hall. Beside the steady clock, the fifth floor of the building was quiet. For ten minutes. 

Then Ciel’s door opened with barely a protest. He looked startled, mouth slightly agape and fingers clutching at his thin blanket. The air around him felt warmer, comfortable, but also unsettling due to him not being able to figure out the reason why. He sat still, seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Maybe there was a monster breathing down on his shoulders. Maybe it was the monster. It. The thing that took his twin and played with him like he was a doll. 

“Boo,” Sebastian said. He chuckled and backed away, surveying Ciel’s nearly empty room. His was empty, too. Just the essential bed, desk, and drawer. They installed a lamp a few weeks ago to replace the broken one, but it was bulb-less. Sebastian hadn’t bothered to alert the orderlies about their mistake. He flipped on Ciel’s desk light, then killed the switch before the brightness could alert the orderly on guard in the hall. “Lucky you,” Sebastian mumbled. 

Ciel’s fingers hurt with the effort of grasping his blanket. He knew the expression was _white-knuckles_ , but it didn’t seem right -- his felt like they were on fire; surely _red knuckles_ was a more fitting analogy. “Sebastian!” he half breathed-half hissed. “Fuck don’t do that! What kind of psycho sneaks up on a blind kid?” He craned his neck and listened intently, trying to make out the boy’s current location by the creaking of the old floor underfoot. 

“Can’t help it. You’re too easy.” He caught on to the way Ciel was tilting his head and keeping his ears on Sebastian’s footsteps, so the taller boy moved almost silently across the room. “What’s got you so jumpy, anyway?” he asked, staring down a hole in Ciel’s wall. 

“Nothing.” Or rather, nothing the other boy would understand or believe. His parents hadn’t and sometimes he wasn’t sure he did either. So far though, Sebastian had shown himself to be somewhat intelligent, and wasn’t likely to buy his answer. “Okay, fine. New place has me anxious and all that. I mean, what happens if I have to piss in the middle of the night?” 

Sebastian bit back a sarcastic remark. “You alert the night guard. An orderly is usually on watch for those emergencies. Turns out, they don’t want you shitting yourself just as much as you don’t want to be shitting yourself.” Tonight the orderly was some girl with a too-tight ponytail. It looked almost painful. Sebastian pulled out two metal wires, each about a finger’s length, and pressed them into Ciel’s hands. “Or, you learn how to pick locks.”


	6. Graveyard Shift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the stretch of time between updates, life kind of got in the way :) We hope this chapter is worth the wait. It's definitely a favoured one.   
> Enjoy!

His first night unsedated at Taunton was terrible. Ciel stared unseeing, up at the ceiling, imagining the worst for every sound he heard; the creaking in the floor were bones breaking under duress, the popping sound of pipes were knuckles cracking and each high-pitched whine of the furnace was a plea for mercy. The only sound he knew was real for certain was the crying coming up from the vents and the last thing he wanted to do was add to that cacophony. 

So he stayed awake all night, refusing to surrender himself to the nightmares that waited like predators. 

The next few days were much the same, but with every sleepless night, his appearance became more garish, his movements jerkier and more uncoordinated. He started nodding off at the most inconvenient times: once during therapy, twice during check-ups with nurse Mey-Rin, four times while being read to by Sebastian and half a dozen times during dinner. 

He told himself that there was safety in numbers, which was why after over a week of insomnia, he decided the risk of getting caught by an orderly for sneaking out of his room was worth it. As most people were sleeping at this point, he decided the second best option was the company of television; it would at least give him the illusion of not being alone. 

By some miracle, he made it to the common room, taking the stairs carefully (and quietly) one at a time on his bottom. It was another stroke of luck that this room had remained unlocked, but the closer he got, the more he realized it might not have been luck at all -- there was _someone_ in there already watching what sounded suspiciously like _Spongebob_. His heart beat a mad tattoo against his ribs and he lowered himself behind a plush armchair situated near the back of the room, hoping he hadn’t been spotted. 

“Are you trying to wake the entire building?” Sebastian asked, spinning around from where he was coiled up on the couch. It was an old thing, dusted with various stains and spots of red that Sebastian hoped were not old blood. He’d laid a blanket over the seat, just in case. 

The armchair Ciel was hidden behind was not any better. It smelled like ketchup and medicine, which was why Sebastian had pushed it far from his sight. Sebastian moved to one side of the couch before patting the recently vacant spot beside him. “You walk like you have elephant legs,” he said, turning back to the yellow porous sponge on the screen. 

When he heard Sebastian’s voice, Ciel exhaled a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He felt his way towards the front of the room, noisily bumping into a rickety rocking chair, knocking over a small coffee table, and tripping over an upturned stool. He was relieved when he found the back of the couch and was almost certain that his path had been made more difficult than it should have been. “I’m not _that_ loud,” he yawned, climbing clumsily over the musty-smelling furniture and practically falling into Sebastian’s lap. “Fuck, sorry!” 

Sebastian caught him out of reflex, and let his hands linger too long even though he was filled with a strong urge to retract and douse them in Purell. The bottle was safe in his pocket. He fiddled with the cap while Ciel settled into his seat. “Couldn’t sleep?” 

“What else is new?” Ciel grumbled, then yawned again. The reaction was almost Pavlovian at this point; whenever someone mentioned the word _sleep_ or _tired_ , his mouth would involuntarily open and he would inhale deeply. “I've always shared a room with my brother, I'm not used to it being… so quiet.” It was a lie obviously; Taunton was the least quiet place he’d spent a night, but he wasn't about to admit to Sebastian that he hated sleeping alone. 

“You can stay here for the night.” Sebastian crossed his legs on the couch, and wished he had another blanket. The air conditioner was always on too high in the common room. It buzzed in the background, joined by Spongebob’s iconic giggling. “If you want,” Sebastian continued. “I’ll wake you up before the orderlies come in the morning.” 

“If you insist,” Ciel stretched and sunk into the overused sofa. He turned on his side, curling into himself a little and felt his feet brush up against Sebastian’s thigh. He closed his eyes and listened to Mr. Krabs, picturing the scene in his head as he remembered it. 

_‘Do you smell it? That smell. A kind of smelly smell. The smelly smell that smells… smelly.’_

Ciel snorted. It was still funny, even blind. “Do you think Krabs is talking about this couch or how you smell like rubbing alcohol all the time?” 

Sebastian grimaced and scooted a bit farther away so that they did not touch. Of all the body parts he did not want to feel against his own, feet made the top of the list. “I’m pretty sure Mr. Krabs’ talking about the anchovies,” he said, getting up and going to a nearby cabinet. 

The orderlies kept it locked with a big padlock, but Sebastian had cracked it open earlier in the night. Now it hung loose on the slightly ajar door. He grabbed two blankets, both smelling of bleach and fabric softener, and threw one over Ciel’s head. 

The smell of disinfectant contrasted sharply with the dank, mothball scent that was imbued into the fabric of the sofa. Ciel sat back up, blanket still over his head and faced Sebastian. Somehow, it was easier to talk to him covered up like this, in case his face gave away any sign of anxiety. “Do you think there’s any ghosts here at Taunton? I mean, do you believe in them…” he took a deep breath, “or _monsters_?”

Sebastian found the question hilarious. Coupled with the way Ciel looked right now, like he was rushed on Halloween night into finding a costume, the question made Sebastian stifle a chuckle. “Taunton was home to a handful of serial killers. So maybe there are ghosts and monsters. There probably are. One could be in this very room.” He lowered his voice and snuck up to Ciel’s side, waited for the television to reach a moment of quiet. Then he yanked the blanket off Ciel’s head, and whispered in his creepiest voice, “It could be standing next to you right now.” 

Ciel’s fist struck out instinctively, cuffing Sebastian’s jaw. “You fuck… you absolute asshole!” he panted, cradling his hand and smoothing his knuckles; he’d hit the other boy a lot harder than he’d meant to. He regretted it immediately, worried Sebastian might leave -- how was he supposed to get any sleep if he was alone again? He got to his knees and walked over to Sebastian at the other end of the couch, hands searching blindly for him and coming to rest on his shoulder. “Sorry! I don’t like getting taken by surprise.” 

Sebastian swatted his hands away, smacking a glob of Purell on Ciel’s cheek by accident (he swore it was at least _partially_ accidental). “No, it’s okay. Stay on your side.” He pushed Ciel back with his foot and shoved away his sanitizer. The bottle was nearly empty. “Is that a string bean on the carpet?” Ciel couldn’t see, but his head turned anyway. Sebastian took the moment to threw the blanket up over his head again. “You’re such a violent little shit.” 

“I bet I could take you if I wasn’t blind,” Ciel yawned again, bunching up some of his blanket under his head as a pillow. He caught a strong whiff of alcohol again, and felt comforted by it. So long as he smelled it, Sebastian was likely nearby. “You promise you’ll wake me up before the orderlies come in?” 

“I promise I’ll try,” Sebastian said. “And you would definitely not be able to take me. Not even if you had a million eyes.” He mirrored Ciel’s action of bundling up a blanket to use as a pillow, and stretched out his legs beside Ciel. It was somewhat okay that they were touching, because the blankets acted as a barrier. Or at least that was what Sebastian told himself. “Good night,” he mumbled, clicking the TV off just as Spongebob was serving up a Krabby Patty.

***

They had barely made it out of the common room by the time Finny came in with the man known to be a sexual deviant. Sebastian had told him that the pervert’s name was Druitt, or something like that, and that his hands often had to be bound due to his tendency of _choking the chicken_ in public spaces.

The boys went their separate ways, Sebastian pointing Ciel towards his room and telling him that if anyone asked why he was out, to simply say he’d been allowed to use the washroom. With the halls so populated in the morning, nobody would be any the wiser. Still, he lingered a moment outside the room where he’d spent the night and heard the orderly chastise the pervert once he found their blankets still of the sofa, asking him if he'd snuck down to watch a porno in the middle of the night. Ciel stole away then, and made it to his room undetected, minutes before he himself was fetched by Finny. 

Breakfast was uneventful, and made dull by the fact that Sebastian never showed up. Ciel wondered if he’d kept the other boy awake with snoring or nightmares, maybe he’d hogged the couch or worse, tried to cuddle him for comfort. Regardless, Sebastian didn’t come eat his usual buttered toast and orange juice, and Ciel was more than happy to finish them for him. 

He was on his way to the library in search of his friend after his shower, when he was told by an orderly that Doctor Dalles asked that he join her for an impromptu appointment. To Ciel, it seemed more a directive than a polite request, so in the interest of keeping favour with the staff, he went willingly. 

Upon hearing _come in_ , he entered the office and felt his way towards one of two chairs facing the psychiatrist's desk. He’d abandoned his walking stick some days ago, preferring to rely on his senses instead. He sat in the faux velvet chair, adjusted the bandages over his eyes and gave the doctor a weak smile. 

“Ciel, I see you’re adjusting to life at Taunton.” Doctor Dalles smiled a bit too forcefully, then looked up from her papers and at Ciel’s bandaged eyes. She dropped the smile, but kept her voice uplifting as she spoke, going over his recent activities that had been reported to her by her orderlies. “You’ve been outside by the lake. That’s good. Fresh air is always recommended here.” The video feed of his adventure outside played on her monitor. She watched him sit down on the bench they’d put there as a formality, none of the other patients really spent time outside, and clicked off the feed. She’d seen it ten times. “Have you had a chance to befriend the other patients?” 

“Not really,” Ciel told her, shrugging noncommittally. He reached forward, fingers skimming the surface of the polished desk for the stress ball the doctor usually left out for him. The sessions had long stopped intimidating him, now he squeezed and kneaded the little squishy ball out of sheer boredom. “I mean, there’s Sebastian, but who else do you want me to be friends with? The nympho? The old man who talks to himself about dolls?” 

Doctor Dalles had been tapping her pen against her own fingers, but she stopped at the name and scribbled it down in Ciel’s folder. “Tell me about Sebastian.” 

Patches of heat spread across Ciel’s cheeks, rose from the nape of his neck to the tips of his ears hidden under a shag of slate hair. “I dunno. He’s kind of an asshole.” Ciel twisted uncomfortably in his seat, sure his guilt was clearly written on his face. Maybe they found out about last night, maybe he’d not been as stealthy as he thought he was. What if he was brought in to rat on Sebastian. He’d rather take the blame for them both than throw the only person at Taunton that wasn’t a million shades of bat-shit crazy under the bus. “But I like him. He reminds me of home for some reason.” 

Sensing the shift in the boy’s mood, the doctor wondered if she should push harder. It was important for patients to make friends and form connections with each other, and she could see that this might be an area where Ciel struggled. He had been ripped from his friends back home and thrown into a place he might view as a sort of prison. “That’s good.” The doctor shuffled her papers until she came across a chart. “There’s a group session today. Would you like to join? Sebastian won’t be there, but it would be a good chance to get to know the others.” 

Ciel put the stress ball back onto the psychiatrist’s desk, feeling that their conversation was nearing an end; Doctor Dalles always ended their sessions with an invite to group therapy. “Can I invite Sebastian to come? We were supposed to hang out this afternoon,” he lied, looking for a reason to get out of it again and fully expecting the woman to tell him that he couldn’t invite a guest, “I just don’t want to break my word to him.” 

She considered it, pulling her lips into a pout while flipping through her papers. Then she looked up at the clock. “I’m afraid not, Ciel. These groups are carefully curated and I’m worried Sebastian might feel uncomfortable around so many people.” She smiled too wide, pearly white teeth revealed by stretched red lips. He couldn’t see; it didn’t matter how she looked anyway. The expression fell. “Maybe next time. With a different group.” 

“Okay, then maybe next time, with a different group, I’ll come too.” He turned away from her patronizing voice and counted the nine steps it would require to reach the door. Once he found the handle, he thanked her for her time and tried not to slam the door on his way out. Something she had said in their session started eating away at him, and it wasn’t just the pitying tone she used. Doctor Dalles had stressed the importance of meeting new people in their time together, and until that moment it hadn’t dawned on him that he might need to replace his former friends. Why hadn’t they visited or at the very least, written him letters? 

He put off looking for Sebastian until he found the answers to those questions. He ran into Finny on his way towards the central nurse’s station and asked whether there was an actual mailroom. 

“I’m afraid there isn’t, Ciel,” Finny told the young boy sympathetically. It had only been a few weeks, but he knew from experience how that sometimes felt like an eternity for someone kept from the outside world. “If you get mail, it’s delivered to your room the next morning.” He paused awkwardly, scratching his coarse, blond hair. He wasn’t sure how Ciel was going to handle having been neglected by his family the way he’d been; sure, he wasn’t the first one, but try telling that to a twelve year old.

“Oh…” Ciel deflated, physically deflated as he exhaled long and shakily. He was glad his eyes were covered and that his bandage was made of an absorbent cotton. “I thought… I hoped someone would have written me.” 

Finny knew he wasn’t supposed to touch the patients in an affectionate manner, but Ciel no longer resembled an almost-teen; he looked smaller, more fragile. He put both hands on his shoulders and came down a bit to look him in the eyes, even knowing the boy couldn’t see him. “I know it sucks, Ciel. You’ve had a lot of adjust to, but believe it or not, they’re adjusting back home too. Your mom and dad might not have even told your friends where you are yet.” He saw Ciel open his mouth to protest, “Give it a few more days, okay?” 

“Can I at least call home?” Ciel asked hopefully, his chin coming up defiantly. 

Finny’s mouth curled into a half smile, happy he could finally give him some optimistic news. “There’s designated calling times for that, and I think it’s something you could bring up with Doctor Dalles.”

Ciel shrugged out of Finny’s tender hold and made off in the opposite direction, not knowing where he was going and not really caring regardless. “Do I need to ask her permission to have a boner in the morning too?” Ciel mumbled under his breath as he stomped away. 

Sebastian waited for Ciel to round the corner, then jumped out to scream “Boo!” at the unexpecting boy. He’d been waiting for Ciel to finish his meeting with Doctor Dalles, who Sebastian thought talked way more than necessary. She looked like a tomato, with her red hair and red lipstick and red dresses. If tomatoes were endlessly annoying. Once, he’d swiped her desk clean of its files and pens, and smiled as she cursed under her breath as if he couldn’t hear her. Her office was giant, and she managed to fill all of it with her ego. He disliked her immensely. 

Ciel had been in the meeting for an awful long time, and that was saying a lot because Sebastian was nothing if not patient. He’d paced the halls, dodging away from the man with the long white hair who spoke in tongues and laughed like a hyena on narcotics. Doctor Dalles had said his name, but he wasn’t desperate enough to press his ear against the door and listen in. So he’d waited down the hall, and saw Ciel exit in a manner that screamed frustration. “What’s up? Therapy didn’t go well?” Sebastian asked, still laughing to himself at his prank. 

Ciel was so in his head, he barely reacted when Sebastian was suddenly at his side. He kept his silence, ignoring the other boy’s question, along with a female orderly’s reminder that lunch was going to be served in ten minutes. He didn’t care, everything would be unpalatable, would taste like chewing sandpaper. 

He was relieved when he heard the distinct echoed clanking and rattling sound of the aging furnace through the stairwell door that led to the dormitories. He pushed through and when it shut with a click behind them, his hand reached out for Sebastian, fisted his collar and dragged his face down closer to his own. His fingers grazed his neck up to his jaw until he found his ear and he whispered into it. “I don’t want to be overheard and I’m not repeating myself, so listen carefully. I need to call home. Not to my parents, but my friends. That bitch Dalles won’t let me if I ask, I know she won’t, so tell me how you’re going to help me do this behind her back.” 

Sebastian smirked, and pried Ciel’s fingers from the collar of his shirt. The kid’s hands were cold and bony, much smaller than Sebastian’s. “What do I get out of it?” 

There was an office where the orderlies kept their things for safe keeping. It had lockers with rusty old combination locks and squeaky hinges. The first night Sebastian spent here, he’d cracked them all open and gone through every purse and wallet. It was mostly money, money that he did not take because it held no value here. Finny had a lot of candy, unsurprisingly. _That_ Sebastian took. He kept it in a pile taped to the wall behind the TV. There were a lot of phones, too. Tiny little metal things that Sebastian had considered taking, but he had no one to call, no important numbers to dial. It didn’t surprise him that Ciel had people. 

Ciel literally had nothing to give in compensation. Nothing. No currency, no special skills, no objects of value. “I'll owe you one. Whenever you want.” He’d made that offer once to Bard and had regretted it the moment it came out of his mouth. The blond boy’s chocolate bar had not been worth taking the fall for the cigarettes Bard’s Gramma had found in his room and the consequent month-long grounding courtesy of his parents. Lucky for him, his brother had shared in the blame, so he had company for those thirty days. Regardless, he was a man of his word, and he was desperate to talk to Lizzie or Sieglinde at the very least. 

“You’re going to regret that, Phantomhive.” Sebastian pushed the door open and strolled out. The hallways were empty; everyone should be at lunch. He didn’t know what he would use Ciel’s IOU for, but he knew it was useful. He kept it in the back of his mind. 

Cameras followed him as he led Ciel to the cafeteria. They paused at the doors, peering into the crowded room. Sebastian sneered. He much preferred eating alone. Having so many eyes made him uncomfortable, and that was the last thing he wanted to be during a meal. “Meet me tonight in the common room, after the orderlies finish locking the doors,” he instructed. “Wear black.”

***

Ciel’s toe tapped the floor silently in his cloth slipper as the minutes ticked by on a nearby clock and it crossed his mind that Sebastian might be fucking with him. His hands smoothed over his shirt, nervously trying to get imaginary wrinkles out of it. It wasn't the first time he’d snuck out to meet Sebastian, but the older boy's directive of ‘wear black’ had made him self-conscious the entire time he waited in the small nook across from the common room. He might have been wearing a bright orange Taunton-regulation shirt for all he knew, it would make sense given they were treated like inmates most of the time.

Two more minutes. He would wait one hundred and twenty seconds more before he went back to his room, to try to think of a way he could get to a telephone on his own. 

“One, two, three…” 

He could always ask other patients at Taunton, but that would require him interacting with them. So, no. 

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine…”

He could do what Finny told him to do: wait another week or talk to Dalles about it. But he didn't want to wait that long, or resort to begging. 

“ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four…” 

Where the fuck was Sebastian? He was probably looking at him from across the hall, laughing his stupid face off. Despite all of Ciel’s senses having become a little sharper over the last few weeks, he still had a hard time hearing the other boy, even if Sebastian walked beside him; it was usually his hand-sanitizer that gave him away. 

“One-eighteen, one-nineteen, one-twenty…”

“Pretty sure you skipped one hundred and four,” Sebastian said, tossing a starburst at Ciel’s head. It was a yellow one. The _worst_ one. He’d already finished two pinks and three reds while Ciel counted out loud in the corner like some kindergarten kid being punished. “And you’re not wearing black. I know you can’t see, but come on. Heist colors.” 

Ciel picked up the discarded candy that fell against his foot and chucked it in the direction where Sebastian’s voice was coming. It made a muffled sound when it hit _something_ , so he could only guess he’d made contact with the boy rather than the wall or floor. “You never said, but were you locked up in here for being an asshole or is there something else clinically wrong with you?” 

Sebastian shrugged and grabbed hold of Ciel’s sleeve. “Both.” He snuck out of the common room, keeping an eye on the lit hallway to their right. Ciel, being blind, was useless as a lookout. Not that Sebastian needed one. “There’s usually an orderly walking around here, so let me know if you hear anything,” he instructed, just to give Ciel something to do. 

The office wasn’t very far from the common room. It had an entrance behind the front desk in the lobby, but that was riskier. Sebastian slid a lockpick out of his pocket and into the keyhole of a gray, unmarked door. There used to be a sign that read, “Employees only” but it had been torn down so many times, they simply gave up replacing it. 

The closest locker was Finny’s, but it was directly in front of a camera. Sebastian pulled Ciel into the room and eased the door shut. He sat the other kid on the floor, under the camera’s lenses. “Listen for footsteps, okay?” The camera swiveled, and Sebastian slipped away. 

“And what, pray tell, is our safe word?” Ciel hissed, feeling completely exposed sitting there in a room he didn’t know. “Or would you like me to cluck like a chicken if I hear something?” He got on his hands and knees and crawled away from where they’d come, not yet convinced Sebastian wasn’t messing with him and leaving him there like a sitting duck to be discovered by a worker.

“You can just say, ‘I hear someone’. But clucking is fine, too.” Sebastian emerged from behind a row of lockers, bouncing Mey-Rin’s cell phone in his hand. The nurse would definitely notice its absence in the morning, so Sebastian pressed it into Ciel’s hands and told him to make the call right here. “I can sneak it back after you’re done and we’ll be out clean,” he said, watching Ciel fumble with the buttons. “Do you want me to dial?” 

“Pfft… I’ve dialed her number in the dark so many times, I don’t need my sight for this.” Ciel’s fingers made out the square shape of the slightly elevated number buttons of the Blackberry and situated his pointer finger on the five. From there, punching her number was a piece of cake. In his mind’s eye, he recalled his mother’s cell phone and where the _send_ button was and pressed it. Lizzie was likely asleep, but he’d called her private line rather than her home number. It rang and rang and on the fourth ring, she picked up. 

“Lizzie! It’s Ciel,” he whispered loudly into the phone, nervous hand shaking as it made a dome over his mouth, “are… are you okay?” 

“Ciel?” She sounded groggy. Sleep colored her voice and it was obvious she was covering a yawn. “Ciel, we’ve been so worried! Your parents didn’t tell us anything and I didn’t know how to contact you!” There was some shuffling, presumably Lizzie getting up from her bed. “Are _you_ okay?” 

Words spilled from Ciel’s lips, and he stumbled over them in his haste to convey as much information as he could to Lizzie. “I’m at Taunton State Hospital. I… I can’t see anything anymore. I don’t know what happened after that night. I don’t even know how I got home. Please, Lizzie. You gotta come visit. I’m going nuts here.” 

“ _You’re_ going nuts? I’m the one that’s dead.” The voice crackled, sounded like stones being grinded down into gravel. It didn’t belong to Lizzie. It was a broken version of what Ciel’s twin had sounded like. The phone almost slipped from his hand. 

Ciel gasped, terrified as his chest tightened and filled with horror. It was like swallowing too much water, he couldn’t breathe properly. He became visibly smaller, drawing his knees up to his chest and curling in on himself as he chastised his friend in a feeble mockery of authority. “Lizzie, t-that’s not funny…” Ciel stuttered, “s-stop it right now.” 

Sebastian was staring at him, brows furrowed in confusion. He mouthed something, but the voice on the phone was laughing. “Come on, little brother. Don’t you recognize me? Or did you leave your memories of me behind the night you left me to die?” 

Ciel took short, quick breaths, trying to get enough air into his lungs. It made a whistling sound each time it passed through his clenched teeth. “I… I didn’t. I tried. Looked everywhere. I couldn't find…” Ciel coughed and it wracked his frame. He stood, hunched over, one hand still holding the Blackberry while the other searched desperately for his inhaler in his pocket. “tried… Sebastian,” he choked both on a sob and on what little oxygen was making its way down his inflamed airway, “in the fire. I tried. For you…” 

“You should have tried harder!” the voice screamed. Sebastian wrestled the phone from Ciel’s hands and ended the call. He deleted it from the list of recents and threw it back into Mey-Rin’s locker. 

“Let’s go. Get up.” Ciel looked so pale, fingers trembling around the phantom phone. “Fuck.” Sebastian threw him over his shoulders, the boy barely weighed anything, and hurried up the four flights of stairs to Ciel’s room. The inhaler was somewhere in his bedside drawer. Sebastian dug around for a few seconds, then triumphantly held it out to a wheezing Ciel. “Lizzie sounds like a dick,” he said, sitting on Ciel’s squeaky bed. 

Whatever answer Ciel gave Sebastian in response, it wasn’t coherent, not even to his own ears. Something like flashes of light, or perhaps licks of fiery flames burst in front of his eyes. He was so overwhelmed that even when Sebastian placed the familiar medication in his waiting hand, he couldn’t properly grip it to shake it, much less bring it to his bluing lips. 

“You’re stressing me out, kid,” Sebastian said, bringing the inhaler up to Ciel’s lips. He was tempted to make the train noises mothers sometimes made to get their children to open their mouths for food. One hand on the back of Ciel’s head and the other holding the inhaler, Sebastian helped Ciel until the boy didn’t look so frozen anymore. 

They sat in silence for a bit, thoughts on whatever just happened in the locker room. Clearly, Lizzie hadn’t been the one on the end of the line. Or if she was, she was playing a cruel joke. Sebastian leaned his head back against the wall and sighed. Ciel’s room was small, but oddly cozy. It smelled clean, but not sterile like the rest of Taunton. He looked at the clock above Ciel’s door and wondered if he should leave so the boy could get some rest before morning came. 

Ciel’s body was exhausted, felt like it had aged twenty years in the span of twenty minutes. Every now and then, he would twitch unwillingly, the way people did when they were on the verge of falling asleep, but would wake with a start. His eyes were tired, heavy, but he resisted the urge to close them, afraid of what he would see behind his lids. His small hand bridged the gap between he and Sebastian and when he found the hem of the bigger boy’s shirt, he held it in a death grip. He stared straight ahead, a mixture of potent shame, weakness, embarrassment and defeat in his tone when he finally broke the silence. “You don’t have to go back to your room tonight, do you?”

“Is that your roundabout way of asking me to stay?” Sebastian said. He got up, pulling himself free of Ciel’s grip. An orderly was pacing around in the hallway so he had to wait for the footsteps to retreat, before ducking out. A few minutes later, Sebastian returned with an armful of blankets and pillows, which he smoothed out on the floor by Ciel’s bed. “You’re lucky my room is too far away.” That wasn’t true. But Ciel didn’t need to know. The lights were already off, so Sebastian settled into his makeshift bed and tapped Ciel on the leg. “Sweet dreams.”


	7. The Long Walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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Soma had been waiting over an hour for him to leave, now he watched as his guardian pulled away in his beat-up green Mini. Three weeks under house arrest hadn’t done him any good. He was still suspicious of the white-haired man who claimed to have no memory of almost having killed them. And after having been escorted back home by the police that night, who told their parents they were lucky not to be charged with arson for setting the out of control blaze in Salem Woods, he supposed Agni locking him up in his home day after miserable day was not the world’s worst punishment. The only phone in the house was also being held prisoner by his guardian, locked away somewhere in the older man’s bedroom, and his police scanner had been smashed upon discovery. 

Less than four minutes after Agni’s departure, Sieglinde’s face popped up in the kitchen window from between a lilac tree and a rosebush. “Go to the basement, north side of the house,” she mouthed to him, exaggerating the words so he could understand them. 

Without a hint of hesitation, he obeyed her and left his cooling toast and chocolate milk on the counter. As he descended, his hand swung overhead, looking for the flimsy rope attached to the bulb. When he couldn’t find it, he assumed it was Agni’s doing, and simply followed the sound of knocking he could hear to the right of him. He pushed the stack of boxes aside, careful not disturb their contents too much until it revealed a small rectangular window that had been boarded up. He heard creaking and groaning as the wood that had been nailed into place to keep him from escaping came apart and smiled as the light hit his face and saw Sieglinde beaming back at him. 

He unclasped the window, and she held it wide open as he pulled himself up and outside. “Thanks!” he whispered between them, afraid to be overheard by neighbours that Agni might have asked to keep an eye out for him. 

“No worries. Bard and I have been keeping watch on your house for six days now, and we were finally confident about your guardian’s schedule. Are you okay?” She’d said everything in a single breath as she pulled him to the backyard where she’d parked her bike. She motioned for him to take the seat and she climbed onto the rear wheel bars. “We’re going to the cemetery, where Bard’s parents are buried by the way.” 

“Okay,” he nodded and stood to start pedaling towards the back lane. “I’m fine. How is everyone?” Sieglinde filled him in on their respective statuses along the way to meet their friends. She’d been grounded for a week and told not to see Ciel anymore, especially after he took the blame for having set fire to the woods in order to get rid of a demon. She told him that the small boy had up and disappeared after that night and that despite their best efforts, they’d been unable to get ahold of him. 

He slowed as he pulled up to the memorial of Bard’s parents. They both dismounted and walked the bike the remaining distance. “Nobody’s heard from Ciel? Lizzie, even you?” he asked by way of greeting. 

Both blondes hesitated. Bard, being the first one Lizzie told about the strange phone call she’d received the night before, stood with his arms folded and his gaze on the tree line. The flowers he’d picked for his parents had been placed delicately on the center of each gravestones. Yellow daffodils. His mother’s favorite. He didn’t particularly liked having so many people here. Not that he didn’t love his friends (though he’d beat you up if you told them that), this was just _his_ place. But he understood. They needed a place to congress. Especially after last night. 

“I got a call,” Lizzie mumbled. Everyone knew she was quick to cry, which wasn’t a bad thing. She was emotional, empathetic. It was a quality they all admired. Bard could tell she was trying to keep the tears at bay now. “I dug around and…” She looked into the forest, as if waiting for confirmation that nothing was there. “Ciel’s at a place called Taunton. It’s a hospital, kind of. More of an asylum, really.” She balled her hands into fists and stood with her head down. The Phantomhive twins were her best friends, and she’d lost them both. 

Soma bowed his head in contrition, or maybe it was defeat. “Perhaps we should all be there after what happened. Nobody believes us. I’m not even sure I believe it myself anymore.” For days after the night of the fire, he’d been stripped of his clothing at three in the morning and anointed with a variety of mystical oils and forced to pray for forgiveness. And he still bore the marks for the occasions that Agni deemed it necessary for him to pay penance for his misdeeds. 

“No.” Sieglinde was firm in her proclaiment. “We didn’t make any of that up. The Phantomhives are just trying to move on… they’re likely having Ciel brainwashed or something. Why else would they put their house up for sale? They want to pretend that the whole things with Sebastian and the fire and… and…” She couldn’t say his name, not yet. “What did Ciel say, Lizzie? Is he okay?”

This was the part Lizzie didn’t want to talk about. Couldn’t. The words trampled over each other to get into her mouth, then laid flat on her tongue. It had happened when she ran to her mom after dropping the phone on the floor of her bedroom. It had happened when she grabbed Bard by the collar of his shirt and tried to tell him there was something wrong with Ciel. There was something wrong with all of them, but it was _worse_ with Ciel. 

The monster wasn’t in Salem anymore. Lizzie felt its absence like sunshine on her skin after a horrible rain. The air smelled a little cleaner. The trees stood a little straighter because there was nothing creeping amongst them anymore. Salem was free of monsters. But Lizzie feared Ciel wasn’t. 

“He thought he was talking to his brother, I think. He sounded… I don’t want to say insane…” She looked at the ground, felt guilt like bile in her mouth. 

Sieglinde threw a sympathetic arm around Lizzie, wishing she had something _good_ to tell her. Something that would appease her and the rest of them, but after her research, she wasn’t sure there was anything she _could_ say. Not that Taunton was on review nearly every year for its horrible conditions and inhumane treatment of its patients. Or that it had a reputation for being haunted and was the likely site of satanic rituals. Besides, she’d probably read about it already, which was why she was turning a sickly shade of green, the more she talked. 

“We should try to go visit him. Write letters or something?” Soma offered lamely, knowing there was no way he’d be able to get anywhere outside of Salem until adulthood at the very least. Maybe Bard or Lizzie? Sieglinde’s parents were reasonable. 

“I called the hospital, no visitations allowed.” Bard pat Lizzie on the head, his way of letting her know he was there if she needed him. And she did need him. She wrapped an arm around his waist. “I got a P.O. box for letters though. We can all write one together, let him know we haven’t abandoned him.”

***

Since his misadventure with the phone call to Lizzie, the days at Taunton began bleeding one into the other. Ciel refused to leave his room, except to take breakfast and to annoy the nurses at the front desk when asking for his nonexistent mail. He missed his last four sessions with Dr. Dalles and when she came to _his_ room to do her job, he simply turned away from her and faced the wall in silence.

He had nothing to say to anyone, except maybe a few words to Sebastian at night after the other boy snuck into his room to keep the nightmares at bay. He wasn’t really good at it; they came regardless. Always the same ones: himself choking on long, inky black hair, trying to expel it by coughing and yanking it out of his throat by the fistful. It was never ending. The floor was littered with feet upon feet of the wet stringy substance falling from his mouth, filling his room and spilling into the hall. Sometimes his insides came out tangled in the hair, bits of spongy lung, sticky blood clots, acrid bile and hissing acid that burned the locks’ outer layer. Sometimes, the hair became animated and strangled him. Sometimes it hoisted him up and wrapped around his neck like a noose and left him kicking and grasping at it from the rafters. 

But it never let him die. He wished it would. 

After having lost enough weight that it became noticeable, he was forced to return to the hospital building and was threatened with an IV should he keep refusing his three daily meals. He fussed, tantrumed and promised the staff that he would eat once his parents came to visit or agreed to bring him home; perhaps tired, or unaccustomed with dealing with such a bullheaded individual as Ciel, the doctor blurted point blank that they had moved across the country and would not likely be coming back any time soon. 

Ciel left the building in a daze after having eaten a disgusting slimy barley soup and two stale crackers. He was numb with renewed grief, and for the following two nights, he slept without stirring. His nightmares were still there, but even his subconsciousness couldn’t be bothered to respond to it with anything more than indifference and lethargy. 

On the third night, he waited for Sebastian to fall asleep on the floor next to his bed, waited for his breathing to even out and for the soft snores to break them up, then pulled out a cotton bag from his drawer that he’d nicked from the laundry room and started stuffing it with spare shirts and pants. He hitched it over his shoulder and dragged his hand along the bedside table for the pins he usually kept behind his lamp to unlock his door. 

The pins weren’t there, and Ciel’s fingers roamed searching under the cover of darkness. The pins, bent into neat little shapes so that they could easily slide into the keyholes without a sound, were lying pressed up against Sebastian’s wrists. He’d shoved them under his sleeve when Ciel had been getting ready for bed. 

Sebastian was not stupid, had been here too long to not know what a snatched laundry bag was for. There were two things desperate kids did when given little possession and a bag to put it in. They stayed, because they were afraid. Or they ran, because they were afraid. 

Ciel was running. Sebastian stretched out his limbs, yawned, and sat upright. The pins stayed tucked under his sleeves, and in a smooth motion unnoticed by the boy to his right, Sebastian slipped the pins into his palms then into his striped cotton pockets. “You’re being too loud,” he murmured, massaging the cramps out of his shoulder. “Going somewhere?” 

“Go back to bed and mind your own business,” Ciel whispered, readjusting the bag over his shoulder. He wondered how long Sebastian had been watching him struggle. He was under the impression that the other boy always had his eyes on him whether he was near or not, that he actually got off seeing him agonize over shit. “But come over and open this door for me before you do,” he added imperiously. 

Sebastian’s eyes were dark, intensified by the shadows flickering over his face. He didn’t move from where he sat on the floor, arms draped over his bent legs and holding up his chin. “Let’s say I open the door and you successfully escape Taunton,” he began, eyeing the back of Ciel’s head. “You’re going to hitchhike back to Salem, back to your friends. Assuming they haven’t moved on and completely forgotten about you, you did kill your own dog, after all, what makes you think your parents won’t just send you back? Or that Taunton won’t send people after you? We are inmates in their care, Ciel. They make money off of our stay here. Hospitals need patients to profit from. They won’t just let you run away.” Sebastian stood, dangling his own master key in his hands. He slipped it into the lock, gave it a languid turn, and eased the door open. “And then there’s the matter of your monster.” 

Ciel froze and his mouth went dry. He'd given that information to the boy the night he'd made the call to Lizzie, but he hadn't expected Sebastian to throw it back in his face like that. 

“First off, I didn't kill my dog, I sacrificed him,” Ciel gritted, fists at his side clenching and unclenching. “Secondly, mom and dad aren't in Salem anymore; I… I don't know where they are. But Lizzie is like family, she won't turn...” He let the words die on his tongue. He must have sounded crazy to her on the phone. 

He must sound crazy to Sebastian _right now_. He took a shuddering breath and reached for the door handle. “The monster’s as dead as my dog,” he lied, knowing deep down that it wasn’t true, but he was less willing to admit it to others than he was to himself. His hand fell on Sebastian’s on the doorknob and he gripped it tight, despite the fact that the other boy was trying to pry it away. “Why don’t you come with me? Let’s get the fuck out of here. You be my eyes… unless you’re _scared_?” 

Sebastian let Ciel hold his hand, despite the urge he had to pour a bottle of sanitizer on it. The other boy’s hand was warm, a lot warmer than the room. A lot warmer than Sebastian’s own hand. “Nothing scares me. It’s just...This building changes after midnight,” he said, looking out into the darkness. The hallway leading from the dorms to the elevator was not well lit in the middle of the night. Not that it mattered to Ciel, but everything looked different in the dark. Sebastian could see shadows moving where shadows shouldn’t exist in the first place. “Let me get my stuff.” 

Sebastian led them down the hall to his own room, where the door was closed but not locked. He grabbed Ciel’s bag and threw his own things inside; not much, he didn’t have much that belonged solely to him and not the hospital. When he finished, he tied the bag up and swung it over his back. They stepped out into the hallway, and heard nails screeching on chalkboards. 

The sound bounced off the walls and forced them to cover their ears, backs hunched and teeth gritted. Sebastian held on to Ciel’s arm, eyes watching the cameras in the hallway flicker out one by one. The lights came on, and he half expected the other patients to file out of their rooms, but the doors stayed locked and the hallway empty. Empty except for whatever was crawling by the elevators. 

It looked like a spider at first, but it only had four limbs, each too long for its body. Long and black as tar, dripping ink onto the tiles as it twitched and seized, clawing its way forward. It moved with the darkness, with the flickering lights. Sebastian’s hold on Ciel’s arm tightened as he searched for a weapon to defend them. 

“What’s wrong? What is it?” Ciel asked stepping behind Sebastian, his hands still over his ears. The question had slipped out of his mouth as if it were a reflex, like a small mallet coming down on his knee. He regretted even asking the moment the words had slipped out. Asking would require him to lower his hands. Asking would consequently lead to finding out. How was it possible that he could hear the tick-tick-tick clicking sound of insect feet on the linoleum with his fingers jammed into the ear canal? The sound ricocheted in his mind and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from: in front, behind, above, below. It was everywhere. 

He pulled on Sebastian’s elbow, towards the other end of the hall where the stairwell was located. They needed to get out of here; between his phone call with Lizzie, the excessive night crying from other patients, the micromanaging of his doctors and now this, he was slowly succumbing to madness. One truth stood out in his mind as they lumbered towards the south end, Ciel tripping over his own feet in his haste to escape: people didn’t come to Taunton because they were mad, they got that way as a result of being there. 

“Keep going.” Sebastian shoved open the door to the stairwell, risking one look back at the hallway where he’d last seen the spider creature. It was gone now, but Sebastian still felt the remnants of its presence in the air. Like static after a close encounter with lightning. He turned back, looked into the dark stairwell, and slammed the door shut. “We can’t go that way.” He could see Ciel start to ask why, but before the boy could say anything, a frantic pounding on the metal door made Sebastian leap away with Ciel in haul. 

“Ciel! Ciel!” came the familiar, pleading voice of Lizzie behind the door. “Help me! It's stuck! This is your fault! You called me and it came for me. It’s stuck!” 

“Lizzie…” Ciel mumbled, stumbling into Sebastian to try to get to the door he was barring. The knocking took center stage in his head, let the tickety insect sounds become tertiary after the banging and Lizzie's wails. “I'm coming!” 

Ciel's hands grasped the handle to the door and he could feel it being violently shaken from the other side. He planted his feet firmly on the floor and slid some inches, not as if the surface had been recently waxed, but as if it was still wet from being washed. His simple trainers squeaked and sloshed against it, and yet it barely registered with how urgently he was pushing his shoulder into the door.”Let go of the door, Lizzie; you're right it's stuck…”

“That's not it, Ciel…”

“What do you mean, it's not it?” he growled back, frustrated at his own ineptitude. The door rattled and the hinges groaned their lament. “Damn it Lizzie, let go!” 

“It's Dad's shaving blades. They're all stuck in my arms. Had to kill myself before it got me.” She sucked a breath through her teeth and the tiny gap between her front ones made a whistling sound that all of them had taken to imitating over the years. “There's so much blood, Ciel. Had to kill myself… all your fault… all your fault… Stay there. Don't contact us. You're killing us all…” 

Ciel let go of the handle as if he'd been electrocuted, hands up at his sides, shaking. He heard the lights flicker overhead and caught a faint whiff of liquid rusted iron -- blood. He backed away from the door, heard his retreating steps as if he were wading through a thick puddle. 

Blood was coating their shoes, sticky against the no-longer-white tiles. It made Sebastian grimace, a hand pinching his nose. The scent was like a thousand pennies shoved up his orifices. He could taste the copper as if it were in his mouth. 

Copper and bitter ink. And the static still lingering in the air. 

“Do you still want to do this? Taunton isn’t the same at night” he asked, grabbing Ciel’s hand and pulling them towards a different stairwell. It was farther. They would have to pass the guard station. Sebastian halted, mapping out the area silently. The hospital was alive tonight, more than it had ever been before. Alive and feeding. Like a monster newly awoken. Soldiering out from its slumber to ravage whatever meal it spotted before it. 

A guard was marching down the hallway adjacent. They were already making so much noise. The guard paused, frozen in the middle of the hall. Light bulbs flickered out one by one until the only surviving bulb swung above the guard’s cocked head. His limbs bent. Elbows jutting forward, broken. He moaned in agony, fell to the floor as his knees snapped. He laid with his head on the tiles. The snapped bone in his neck created a hump, but that didn’t stop him from shoving himself forward with hands that bent backwards. He stared at Sebastian. 

And Sebastian was without a weapon. Well, he had Ciel. Could toss the boy at the contorted guard if need be, but that would defeat the entire purpose of what they were doing. Get Ciel out, not throw him to the contortionist from hell. And Sebastian didn’t think that plan would go over too well with Ciel either. 

The guard inched forward, moving surprisingly fast for someone with broken bones. For a brief moment, Sebastian wondered where he came from. The giant spider was scarier. The manifestation of Lizzie was fucked up, but at least Sebastian could understand where it came from. This guard was… random. 

It didn’t matter, in the end. The guard pushed right past them and down the hall. Continued its rounds despite its monstrous condition. Sebastian loosened his grip on Ciel’s hand. “Come on.” They were right at the stairwell door now. He could hear what sounded like the accumulation of a dozen children begging for their lives behind the metal slab. Maybe it was another Lizzie, a louder one. Bloodier one. Sebastian opened the door. 

And the sound stopped. The stairwell was not empty. Not at all. Children floated in the space like they’d been plucked from their beds and left to hover aimless in zero gravity. Sebastian reached out to touch one, and the rest turned their heads to look at him. All moving together, an orchestra of tiny, soulless bodies. Theirs mouths started to move, opened inhumanly wide. As if their jaws had been dislocated. 

“Get back to bed.” 

Blind, Ciel could not appreciate the loose gaping mouths, and skin that sagged from bone and muscle, sinew and tendon barely hanging onto children that looked starved of life. But he heard it. Heard the flesh tear at their maws like stale, silk paper ripping as the intensity of their _Get back to bed_ chant neared a crescendo that never came. He was vaguely aware of shaking his head, a quiet defiance in the face of the monstrous he could not see. 

And it took offense to his brazen audacity. So did Sebastian, by the sound of his huffed exasperation. Ciel careened headfirst towards the stairwell, unsure if he'd been pushed that way or pulled. Whatever had caused it, he felt as if he’d breached some insubstantial barrier, like walking through a waterfall but one that flowed upwards, one that did not saturate him with the dank, aqueous stench that surrounded him. He still he felt cold, shivered, teeth chattering and gazed skywards despite not seeing anything. 

“Get back to bed,” the voices, some of them faintly familiar, echoed in voracious discontent. 

Fingers brushed his face, an icy sting burning three thin frost-bitten gashes along the right side of his face from chin to cheek. It grasped the roots of his hair in its glacial hand and dragged him up to the tips of his toes. He hissed, clenching both fists and eyes but refusing to turn away like a coward, like he had that night in the forest. “No!” he spat back, snarling the sound, something like the broken screech his dog Sebastian had made when he had… when… “Let me fucking leave! Who are you?” 

“I don’t think they’ll indulge you, Ciel.” Sebastian shoved at one of the bodies. It’s skin was dripping off. Fell apart in his hands like wet paper. And the scent of their decaying, long dead flesh, was worst than the rusting smell resentful Lizzie had emitted. Almost worse. 

He pried the ice cold fingers from Ciel, and the boy was breathing so hard Sebastian wondered if he might be having an asthma attack. That would be unideal. Inconvenient. Sebastian patted Ciel on the back, hard. “Watch out for that little brunette. I think she has it out for you.” As soon as the words left his mouth, the dead girl kicked and seized, fists locked and mouth gaping so wide that it split her face down the side. Blood dripped out, the same black, inky liquid that looked more like tar. She chanted faster than the others. Her “get back” more venomous. 

“Don’t come near us Ciel. It only wants you. Stay away from us. Don’t be so selfish.” A boy, tan skin and dark shoulder length hair, sat up and glared. His eyes were hollowed and beetles were crawling out. 

“No. Don’t listen to him.” Another boy. Blonde. He wasn’t floating, but stood in the corner of the stairwell. A hole took up where his intestines should be. The blood pouring out of him sloshed as he walked. “Come back. Come home. It’s hungry. It’s waiting. We’ll go with you. We’ll float together.” 

Ciel threw his hands over his ears. It made no difference. The voices were in his head now, locked in there like prisoners on death row rattling the bars, clamoring to be heard one last time. There was no mistaking them either: Sieglinde, Soma and Bard. What had he done? What kind of mess had he left them to clean up? He thought for sure that in taking the blame for the fire, for the dog, that he had absolved them of responsibility. 

His fingers curled into tight fist over his ears and he shook where he stood, transfixed and impotent. At a loss for what else to do, Ciel took a step towards the cacophony, but was abruptly held back by a grip so firm he nearly stumbled onto his ass. 

“Seba--” he began.

“Shhhh…” a voice soothed him. It did not belong to his asylum friend, nor did it belong to any of his Salem friends.

It spoke right by his ear, the heat of its breath warming the surrounding bandages that covered his eyes. Hands too small to belong to the boy who'd accompanied him slipped over his fists, loosed the fingers and brought them down to his sides. Ciel didn't resist because he knew who this was. Finally, not a broken, grotesque version of his twin, but rather one who knew his reactions to stress, one who took care of him.

“ _Ebeem nowtra dhorwol faetop. Tupkop fowrot grags tro notres_.”

Ciel nodded fervently in answer to the secret twin language uttered between them. He understood it as if he were five again and they wanted to discuss their mother's awful cooking at the dinner table without being understood, without getting in trouble. 

Nobody, no monster, no nightmarish fiend could have duplicated the nonsensical communication, the cadence of his brother's sing-song tenor with so much accuracy, so he trusted it. Implicitly. 

He felt cold lips press against his cheek and then nothing at all. Moisture filled his blinking eyes behind the cotton and he turned towards Sebastian. “We can't leave.”

Sebastian, standing with furrowed brows and tight fists, grabbed Ciel by the shoulders and held the smaller boy still. “You’re sure?” He didn’t have to ask to know the answer. The monster (Sebastian spared a glance at the stairwell), monsters, plural, had destroyed any desire Ciel had of jailbreak. And Sebastian was not going to leave without him. There was nothing out there. 

Everything Sebastian really gave a shit about was within Taunton’s walls. So if Ciel wanted to stay, then they would stay. He tossed the small bag he’d been carrying over his shoulder with false exasperation, and eased the stairwell door shut. The floating children were gone anyway, lost in the darkness. “All that, for nothing.” He grabbed Ciel’s thin wrist, right over the scratchy cotton of his shirt, and led the way back to his room. Everything seemed calmer now. No more giant spider monsters patrolling the halls. All of hell’s creatures had receded back to their trenches to wait. “This building really didn’t want us to leave,” Sebastian mumbled. “Do you think it’s haunted?” 

Ciel let himself be led, still felt the damp coolness on his face and kept his hand on it as if he could keep it there permanently. Soon enough, the heat from his body chased it away and with it, the lingering scent of terror that clung to his willow frame. He mulled over Sebastian’s question, and the limited knowledge he held about hauntings, most of which came from his twin’s favorite horror writer. 

He made a mental list, jotting down questions he would need answers to. Had there been any murders at Taunton? Had Taunton been built on a sacred indian burial ground? Were demons summoned here at some point? He could not ask Doctor Dalles or even Finny -- they were biased, Taunton paid their salary after all and hadn’t Sebastian said there was money to be made by keeping them here? And Sebastian would be more than happy to take the piss out of him by giving him false information just to have him make a fool of himself. 

No, what Ciel needed was someone with no filter, someone who’d been here a long time, someone who had no desire to leave. 

Someone everyone already thought was crazy. 

By the time he resolved to find the old man, he was pushed onto his bed none-too-gently and was grateful for it. He heard the other boy walking about the room; an odd thing to notice because he’d never done so before. There was a very faint squelching in the light steps, like Sebastian had tracked mud into the room with them. He was going to mention it, but he remembered the taller boy’s aversion to dirt and germs and thought he might simply be tired or exhausted from the night’s events. 

Ciel got under his covers and faced the direction of the wall, moving all the way over in a silent offer of half his bed. He could feel and smell his own breath bouncing back, washing over him and behind his bandage (which he’d taken to sleeping with), he closed his eyes. 

Finally he spoke, not answering the question Sebastian had asked him, but rather inquiring one of his own. “Do you think _people_ can be haunted?” 

Sebastian paused, and a heavy, unsettling silence blanketed the room. There was a noticeable lack of ambient noise. No crickets chirping. No movement from the other patients next door. Even the wind had gone still. It was as if the earth itself took in a breath and waited for Sebastian to speak. He had an answer, one Ciel would not like, and he stared at the other boy’s curled up figure as he contemplated whether or not he should tell the truth. 

The sun would be rising soon; light was already beginning to creep through the windows. Sebastian frowned, the corner of his lips twitching as he took in a breath. “Monsters are peculiar things. They can attach themselves to nearly anything.” In the hall, an orderly had started her rounds. The clicking of her heels sung along with the beating of Sebastian’s heart. “I’m going down to the kitchen to grab something to eat. Good night, Ciel.” He closed the door so gently behind him that it barely made a noise, and as he followed the shadows towards the orderly, he wondered if Ciel had heard him at all.


End file.
